UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 


John  Ruskin,  Preacher 

And  Other  Essays 


BY 

LEWIS  H.  CHRISMAN 

Professor   of   English    Literature 
Wmt  Virginia  Weileyan  College 


THE  ABINGDON  PRESS 
NEW  YORK  CINCINNATI 


Copyright,  1921,  by 
LEWIS  H.  CHRISMAN 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  Am«rio» 


PS 
35*05 


CONTENTS 

PREFATOKY  NOTE 5 

I.  JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 7 

II.  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 25 

HI.  RADIANT  VIGOR 46 

c 

JG      IV.  THE  SPIRITUAL  MESSAGE  OF  WHITTIER 56 

.3 

V.  THE  ART  OF  BEING  HUMAN 75 

VI.  THE  WHITE  WATER  LILY 86 

VII.  THE    FUNDAMENTAL    TEACHING   OF    THOMAS 

CARLYLE 102 

§  Vm.  CROSS-EYED  SOULS.  .                                        .  129 

CJj 

IX.  THE  AMERICAN  HERITAGE 141 

X.  PERMANENT  VALUES  IN  THE  BIGLOW  PAPERS.  .  163 

<      XI.  LESSENING  THE  DENOMINATOR 177 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

THE  essay  entitled  "The  White  Water  Lily" 
first  appeared  in  the  Methodist  Review  and 
"The  Fundamental  Teachings  of  Thomas  Car- 
lyle"  in  The  Methodist  Review  (Quarterly) 
and  are  republished  with  the  kind  consent  of 
the  editors  of  the  periodicals.  Acknowledg 
ment  is  also  due  to  Houghton  Mifflin  Company 
for  permission  to  quote  at  length  from  the 
writings  of  several  major  American  poets,  and 
to  Charles  Scribner's  Sons  and  Dr.  Henry  J. 
van  Dyke  for  the  privilege  of  quoting  two 
stanzas  from  "The  Toiling  of  Felix."  Two 
passages  from  Leslie  Stephen's  Hours  in  a 
Library  are  quoted  through  the  courtesy  of  G. 
P.  Putnam's  Sons. 

L.  H.  C. 


JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

ALTHOUGH  he  wore  no  black  Geneva  gown 
and  never  stood  behind  the  sacred  desk,  John 
Ruskin  all  of  his  days  was  a  golden-mouthed, 
burning-hearted,  spiritually  minded  preacher  of 
the  truths  of  God.  The  Rev.  W.  P.  Paterson, 
a  Scottish  theologian,  recently  said,  "During 
the  bygone  century  it  may  be  doubted  if  the 
ornaments  of  the  Christian  pulpit  did  as  much 
as  lay  preachers  like  Carlyle  and  Ruskin  to 
quicken  the  social  conscience  and  to  com 
mend  lofty  ideals  in  the  various  departments 
of  secular  life  and  labor."  Like  the  melan 
choly  prophet  of  Judah's  shadowed  days, 
Ruskin  was  "valiant  for  truth."  For  over 
twenty  years  he  was  preeminently  a  critic  of 
art.  But  he  was  no  dilettante  defender  of 
that  pictorial  putrescence  which  is  sometimes 
foisted  upon  a  gullible  public  by  depraved 
purveyors  of  vileness  which  they  miscall  art. 
Ruskin  was  the  unfailing  champion  of  the 
things  which  are  honest  and  just  and  pure 
and  lovely  and  of  good  report.  His  dominant 

7 


8          JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

concern  was  with  the  mighty  truths  of  human 
nature  upon  which  the  laws  of  both  art  and 
life  are  based.  In  one  of  his  key  sentences  he 
tells  us  "that  the  manual  arts  are  as  accurate 
exponents  of  ethical  states  as  other  modes  of 
expression:  first,  with  absolute  precision,  of 
that  of  the  workman,  and  then  with  pre 
cision  disguised  by  many  distorting  influences, 
of  that  of  the  nation  to  which  it  belongs." 

In  the  gospel  according  to  Ruskin,  we  are 
taught  that  there  can  be  no  real  beauty  which 
does  not  emanate  from  beauty  of  soul.  The 
character  of  a  people  is  both  the  cause  and 
result  of  its  art.  By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know 
them.  A  noble  art  can  exist  only  as  the  fruit 
of  a  noble  soul.  It  cannot  be  produced  by  a 
besotted,  materialized,  shriveled-souled  people. 
Neither  is  art  without  its  reaction  upon  life. 
Ruskin's  father  would  not  allow  his  son  to 
look  at  an  impure  or  careless  painting.  If  a 
people  are  compelled  to  live  in  constant  con 
tact  with  that  which  is  common  and  vile,  the 
very  warp  and  woof  of  their  lives  is  bound 
to  be  coarsened.  A  real  interpreter  of  art 
must  be  an  interpreter  of  life  as  well.  Ruskin 
as  he  battled  for  purity  and  sincerity  in  paint 
ing  and  sculpture  and  architecture,  was  fight 
ing  a  good  fight  for  noble  ideals  of  thought 
and  action.  "Be  a  good  man,"  says  Carlyle, 


JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER  9 

"and  there'll  be  one  rascal  less."  Ruskin 
again  and  again  teaches  the  same  lesson. 
Whatever  his  theme,  before  he  is  through 
with  it  he  is  sure  to  make  it  a  discussion  of 
the  conduct  of  life. 

In  Traffic  he  says:  "The  first,  and  last,  and 
closest  trial  question  to  any  living  creature  is, 
'What  do  you  like?'  Tell  me  what  you  like 
and  I'll  tell  you  what  you  are.  Go  out  into 
the  street  and  ask  the  first  man  or  woman  you 
meet  what  their  taste  is;  and  if  they  answer 
candidly,  you  know  them,  body  and  soul." 
He  most  strenuously  objected  to  being  regarded 
as  a  "respectable  architectural  man-milliner," 
dispensing  the  latest  information  as  to  the 
"newest  and  sweetest  thing  in  pinnacles." 
This  great  prophet  of  reality  was  not  satisfied 
with  mere  doing  of  the  right,  but  he  insisted 
on  the  necessity  of  loving  the  right.  ^  His 
Scottish  mother  had  so  indoctrinated  him  with 
the  spirit  of  the  New  Testament  that  he  well 
understood  that  there  is  that  which  goes  be 
yond  verbose  piety  and  Pharisaic  legalism. 
He  never  failed  to  emphasize  the  dominance  of 
the  inner  life.  He  knew  that  above  all  else 
the  cup  must  be  pure  within.  He  writes: 
"Would  you  paint  a  great  picture?  be  a  good 
man.  Would  you  carve  a  perfect  statue? 
be  a  pure  man.  Would  you  enact  a  wise  law? 


10        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

be  a  just  man."  But  Ruskin  was  no  effete 
preacher  of  a  nebulous  ethical  culture.  He 
is  quoted  as  saying  that  his  life  was  dedicated 
not  to  "the  study  of  the  beautiful  in  face  or 
flower,  in  landscape  or  gallery,  but  to  an  inter 
pretation  of  the  truth  and  beauty  of  Jesus 
Christ." 

But  when  Ruskin  was  about  forty  years  of 
age  he  saw  a  new  vision.  He  had  been  grow 
ing  more  and  more  sensitive  to  the  hammer 
blows  struck  by  Carlyle  in  Sartor  Resartus, 
in  Chartism  and  Past  and  Present.  In  all  of 
his  efforts  to  secure  practical  application  of 
his  art  teaching,  he  was  impeded  by  unjust 
and  revolting  social  and  industrial  conditions. 
England,  full  of  wealth,  with  its  multifarious 
produce,  with  supply  for  every  human  want, 
was,  as  has  been  said  with  tragic  truth,  "dying 
of  inanition."  Two  million  of  her  workers, 
"the  cunningest,  the  strongest,  and  the  will- 
ingest  our  earth  ever  had,"  sat  in  workhouses 
and  in  the  poor-law  prisons.  In  counties  of 
which  the  green  fields  were  dotted  with  herds 
and  flocks,  the  farm  laborer  did  not  taste 
meat  from  one  year  to  another.  On  many  a 
night  there  set  out  from  London  a  vehicle 
loaded  to  the  breaking  point  with  "two-legged 
live  stock":  London  foundlings  being  disposed 
by  contract  to  employers  of  labor  in  northern 


JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER         11 

factories.  In  the  mines  miserable  women, 
naked  to  the  waist,  crawled  through  narrow 
passages  drawing  after  them  cars  laden  with 
coal.  On  the  one  hand  was  a  careless,  blatant, 
vulgar  luxury  and  on  the  other  a  sullen,  hope 
less,  defiant  poverty.  "It  is  no  time  for  the 
idleness  of  metaphysics  or  the  entertainment 
of  the  arts,"  said  Ruskin. 

His  ever-deepening  conviction  that  the  very 
fountains  of  English  life  were  impure  impelled 
him  to  turn  his  back  upon  the  fields  in  which 
he  had  labored  with  joy  and  honor  to  become 
a  veritable  voice  crying  in  the  wilderness. 
Unto  This  Last,  the  work  which  marks  his 
transition,  first  appeared  in  the  Cornhill  Mag 
azine.  These  papers  were  a  stone  thrown  into 
the  standing  pool  of  contemporary  economic 
thought.  Political  economy  had  indeed  be 
come  the  "dismal  science."  It  was  committing 
the  cardinal  sin  of  substituting  logic  for  life. 
In  the  minds  of  many  the  conclusions  of  the 
"Manchester  School"  were  the  law  delivered 
once  for  all.  Ruskin's  onslaught  against 
economic  orthodoxy  won  for  him  the  excoria 
tions  of  thousands.  He  exchanged  laudation 
for  obloquy.  The  articles  were  unpopular  to 
such  an  extent  that  Thackeray,  at  that  time 
editor  of  the  Cornhill,  was  compelled  to  limit 
the  projected  series  to  four  articles.  Ruskin's 


12         JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

"rattle-brained  radicalism"  consisted  merely  in 
trying  to  apply  the  teachings  of  Christianity  to 
the  industrial  conditions  of  his  own  day.  It 
is  altogether  possible  that  he  was  sometimes 
profoundly  mistaken.  He  was,  moreover,  ex 
treme  in  many  of  his  statements.  The  ability 
to  coo  as  gently  as  a  dove  was  not  a 
notable  characteristic  of  Ruskin.  But  as  we 
read  Unto  This  Last  to-day  and  view  its 
teachings  from  the  vantage  ground  of  another 
generation,  it  is  difficult  for  us  to  understand 
why  its  teachings  were  received  with  so  many 
"showers  of  oil  of  vitriol." 

For  John  Ruskin  the  die  had  been  cast. 
Henceforth  he  was,  like  the  knights  of  other 
days,  to  give  his  life  to  redressing  human 
wrong.  The  interpreter  of  art  had  become  a 
social  reformer.  This  change  of  viewpoint  had 
a  most  marked  influence  upon  his  literary 
style.  He  deliberately  pruned  the  overrich 
eloquence  of  his  earlier  days;  with  little  loss  of 
its  pristine  beauty  it  became  more  concise, 
well-knit,  and  muscular.  As  the  years  passed 
by  he  preached  with  ever  intenser  vehemence 
and  skill.  To  that  which  had  been  but  a 
thunderous  roar  in  Carlyle  he  gave  precision, 
reality,  and  convicting  power.  There  is  a 
danger  which  not  all  writers  about  him  have 
avoided:  of  fixing  too  great  a  gulf  between  the 


JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER         13 

two  phases  of  Ruskin's  literary  life.  It  must 
be  remembered  that  in  the  years  when  he  was 
distinctively  an  art  critic  he  was  also  a  prophet 
of  social  betterment,  and  also  that  in  the 
latter  part  of  his  life  he  delivered  some  of  his 
most  luminous  lectures  on  art. 

If  Ruskin  had  simply  said  that  it  was  wrong 
for  a  man  of  superior  strength  to  strangle  his 
weaker  neighbor  out  of  hate  for  him,  every 
body  would  have  agreed.  But  he  went  further 
and  contended  that  it  was  just  as  sinful  for 
an  individual  of  superior  shrewdness  to  take 
advantage  of  some  less  gifted  brother.  It  is 
to  be  most  earnestly  hoped  that  such  teaching 
would  not  be  found  revolutionary  to-day  either 
in  England  or  in  America.  A  reading  of  the 
history  of  our  own  country  in  the  decades 
immediately  following  the  Civil  War,  when  it 
seemed  as  though  many  of  our  national  leaders 
were  willing  to  lower  their  ethical  standards 
in  order  to  fill  their  coffers,  impresses  upon  us 
the  fact  that  within  the  last  twenty  years  we 
have  passed  through  a  renaissance  of  righteous 
ness.  To  the  modern  man  of  our  generation 
the  social  message  of  Ruskin  is  not  especially 
startling.  "The  survival  of  the  fittest"  is  not 
the  law  of  an  industrialism  which  is  Chris 
tian.  Ruskin  says:  "You  would  be  indignant 
if  you  saw  a  strong  man  walk  into  a  theater 


14        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

or  lecture  room  and  calmly  choose  the  best 
place,  take  his  feeble  neighbor  by  the  shoulder 
and  turn  him  out  of  it  into  the  back  seats  or 
the  street.  You  would  be  equally  indignant 
if  you  saw  a  stout  fellow  thrust  himself  up  to 
a  table  where  some  hungry  children  were  being 
fed  and  reach  his  arm  over  their  heads  and 
take  the  bread  from  them.  But  you  are  not 
the  least  indignant  if,  when  a  man  has  stout 
ness  of  thought  and  swiftness  of  capacity,  and 
instead  of  being  long-armed  only  has  the 
much  greater  gift  of  being  long-headed,  you 
think  it  perfectly  just  that  he  should  use  his 
intellect  to  take  the  bread  out  of  the  mouths 
of  all  the  other  men  in  the  town  who  are  in 
the  same  trade  with  him;  or  use  his  breadth 
of  sweep  and  sight  to  gather  some  branch  of 
the  commerce  of  the  country  into  one  great 
cobweb  of  which  he  is  himself  to  be  the  central 
spider,  making  every  thread  vibrate  with  the 
points  of  his  claws,  commanding  every  avenue 
with  the  facets  of  his  eyes.  You  see  no  in 
justice  in  this." 

Strength  is  never  an  excuse  for  tyranny. 
"We  that  are  strong  ought  to  bear  the  infir 
mities  of  the  weak,"  said  the  great  apostle  to 
the  Gentiles.  There  are  times  when  unre 
strained  competition  may  be  nothing  more  or 
less  than  flagrant  robbery.  Christianity  is  pre- 


JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER         15 

eminently  social.  In  Sur  la  Propriete,  by 
Emile  de  Laveleye,  the  author  gives  expression 
to  this  significant  thought:  "There  is  a  social 
order  which  is  the  best.  Necessarily  it  is  not 
always  the  present  order.  Else  why  should  we 
seek  to  change  the  latter?  But  it  is  that  order 
which  ought  to  exist  to  realize  the  greatest 
good  for  humanity.  God  knows  it  and  wills 
it.  It  is  for  man  to  discover  and  establish  it." 
Ruskin  was  one  of  the  pioneers  in  the  search 
for  the  best  social  order.  Many  have  fol 
lowed  in  his  footsteps.  The  splendid  literature, 
prophetic  of  an  era  of  brotherhood  and 
justice  given  to  us  by  forward-looking  lead 
ers  of  modern  thought,  belongs  to  the  heritage 
which  has  come  to  our  generation  from  John 
Ruskin,  preacher  of  social  righteousness  and 
justice. 

Ruskin  had  no  language  too  scathing  with 
which  to  denounce  the  nominal  religion  of 
materialized  men  and  women.  In  his  day,  as 
in  ours,  ecclesiasticism  and  religion  were  not 
always  synonymous  terms.  There  were  those 
who  sat  in  high  seats  in  the  temples  who  wor 
shiped  not  God  but  the  "Goddess  of  Get- 
ting-on,"  or  "Britannia  of  the  Market."  Again 
and  again  with  consummate  eloquence  and  un 
restrained  irony  he  denounced  that  miscalled 
Christianity  which  expressed  itself  in  barren 


16         JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

formalism  or  in  a  succession  of  emotions  unre 
lated  to  actual  living.  He  emphasized  the  ok 
truth,  "No  man  can  serve  two  masters."  A 
man  cannot  endure  as  seeing  Him  who  it 
invisible  and  at  the  same  time  bow  before  the 
golden  shrine  of  the  "Goddess  of  Getting-on.' 
Christianity  is  not  something  remote  from  life 
It  is  that  which  can  permeate,  transform,  anc 
glorify  every  sphere  and  every  task.  A  cer 
tain  English  lord  is  quoted  as  saying,  "I  resped 
Christianity  as  much  as  any  man,  but  I  objed 
when  they  try  to  make  it  interfere  with  8 
man's  private  life."  In  his  book  New  Worlds 
for  Old,  H.  G.  Wells  tells  of  a  transaction  bj 
which  the  capital  of  a  railroad  was  swollen  fron 
forty  million  to  nearly  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
three  millions  to  cover  an  expenditure  in  im 
provements  of  twenty-two  and  a  half  millions 
It  is  unfortunately  often  the  case  that  finan 
ciers  who  mulct  the  public  in  this  fashioi 
are  members  of  orthodox  communion,  and  make 
a  point  of  being  regarded  as  religious.  Ruskin 
objected  to  formal  piety  being  a  cloak  foi 
predatory  industrialism.  In  The  Crown  oi 
Wild  Olives  we  find  this  sentence,  striking  in 
its  simple  truth:  "The  one  Divine  work — the 
one  ordered  sacrifice — is  to  do  justice." 

Ruskin  was  not  a  socialist,  although  many  oi 
the   ideas   of   modern   socialism   have   sprung 


JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER         17 

from  seed  which  he  planted.  We  must  also 
admit  that  he  was  not  entirely  successful  in 
his  effort  to  apply  his  social  teaching  to  the 
life  of  his  generation.  Yet  it  must  be  remem 
bered  that  seldom  indeed  do  the  prophet  and 
the  executive  dwell  in  the  same  tenement  of 
clay.  We  have  no  particular  reason  for  be 
lieving  that  Amos  of  Tekoa  would  have  been 
the  ideal  man  to  organize  a  new  social  sys 
tem;  we  find  it  slightly  difficult  to  picture  John 
the  Baptist  in  the  guise  of  an  ecclesiastical 
organizer.  Ruskin  was  an  artist  and  a  preacher 
and  not  an  administrator.  Of  him  it  can  be 
said  as  of  the  parish  priest  in  Chaucer's  Can 
terbury  Tales : 

"But  Cristes  lore,  and  his  apostles  twelve, 
He  taughte,  but  first  he  folwed  it  him-selve." 

Carlyle  and  Spencer,  in  the  seclusion  of  their 
libraries,  talked  most  passionately,  and  often 
most  wisely,  about  the  regeneration  of  modern 
society.  They  lived  laborious,  strenuous,  silent, 
useful  lives,  but  they  never  stirred  one  finger 
to  change  the  conditions  against  which  they 
fulminated.  No  one  blames  them;  they  had 
other  work.  But  Ruskin,  by  far  the  most 
productive  of  our  modern  English  writers, 
toiled  "like  a  curate  or  missionary  in  some 
crowded  parish,"  caring  for  the  bodies,  the 


18        JOHN  RTJSKIN,  PREACHER 

minds,  and  the  souls  of  his  weaker  brethren. 
Frederic  Harrison  has  well  said,  "The  first  life 
of  John  Ruskin  was  the  life  of  a  consummate 
teacher  of  art  and  master  of  style;  the  second 
life  was  the  life  of  priest  and  evangelist." 

Unlike  certain  modern  preachers  of  the  social 
gospel,  Ruskin  did  not  minimize  individual 
righteousness.  In  valiant,  hard-hitting  English 
he  denounces  the  godlessness  of  a  people  of 
jaded  moral  sense.  His  sarcastic  version  of 
the  Ten  Commandments  is  a  veritable  philippic 
against  subtle  hypocrisy: 

"Thou  shalt  have  gods  of  self  and  ease  and 
pleasure  before  me.  Thou  shalt  worship  thine 
own  imaginations  as  to  house  and  goods  and 
business,  and  bow  down  and  serve  them. 
Thou  shalt  remember  the  Sabbath  day,  to  see 
to  it  that  all  its  hours  are  given  to  sloth  and 
lounging  and  stuffing  the  body  with  rich  foods, 
leaving  the  children  of  sorrow  and  ignorance 
to  perish  in  their  sodden  misfortune.  Thou 
shalt  kill  and  slay  men  by  doing  as  little  as 
possible  thyself,  and  squeezing  as  much  as 
possible  out  of  others.  Thou  shalt  look  upon 
loveliness  in  womanhood  to  soil  it  with  im 
purity.  Thou  shalt  steal  daily;  the  employer 
from  the  servant  and  the  servant  from  the 
employer,  and  the  devil  take  the  hindmost. 
Thou  shalt  get  thy  livelihood  by  weaving  a 


JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER         19 

great  web  of  falsehoods  and  sheathing  thyself 
in  lies.  Thou  shalt  covet  thy  neighbor's  house 
to  possess  it  for  thyself;  thou  shalt  covet  his 
office  and  his  farm,  his  goods  and  his  fame, 
and  everything  that  is  his.  And  to  crown  all 
these  laws  the  devil  has  added  a  new  command 
ment — thou  shalt  hate  thy  neighbor  as  thou 
dost  hate  thyself." 

Ruskin,  above  all  else,  endeavored  to  avoid 
expressing  banal  nothingness  in  eloquent  lan 
guage.  He  was  mostly  exceedingly  concrete  in 
his  denunciations  of  evil  doing.  As  he  grew 
older  he  was  dominated  more  and  more  by  a 
sense  of  wrongs  to  be  righted.  The  thought 
that  in  the  midst  of  sorrow,  suffering,  wretched 
ness,  and  sin  those  whose  talents  and  oppor 
tunities  should  have  made  them  the  real  lead 
ers  of  their  people,  were  giving  their  days  to 
game-preserving  and  to  vapid  society  made 
him  grow  bitter.  To  him  sin  was  no  empty 
abstraction.  His  very  soul  was  thrilled  by 
what  Carlyle  called  "a  divine  rage  against 
falsity."  His  stern  words  like  a  flame  of  fire 
descended  upon  grossness,  luxury,  and  mam- 
monism.  With  something  of  the  spirit  and 
power  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  he  stood  for 
duty  rather  than  privilege,  character  rather 
than  possession,  and  ideals  rather  than  ma 
terials.  He  knew  that  a  transformed  society 


20        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

could  consist  only  of  regenerated  men  and 
women.  He  knew  of  the  battles  between  the 
powers  of  light  and  the  powers  of  darkness 
which  are  fought  in  every  human  heart. 
"Every  faculty  of  man's  soul,  and  every  in 
stinct  of  it  by  which  he  is  meant  to  live,  is 
exposed  to  its  own  special  form  of  corruption: 
and  whether  within  man,  or  in  the  external 
world,  there  is  a  power  or  condition  of  tempta 
tion  which  is  perpetually  endeavoring  to  reduce 
every  glory  of  his  soul,  and  every  power  of 
his  life,  to  such  corruption  as  is  possible  to 
them."  Much  as  he  stressed  social  better 
ment,  he  realized  that  it  is  futile  without 
individual  salvation.  The  truth,  "Man  is  more 
than  meat,"  stands  at  the  very  heart  of  his 
teaching.  It  was  borne  in  upon  him  that  the 
making  of  human  souls  is  the  most  important 
manufacture  in  which  a  nation's  energies  could 
be  engaged.  He  hoped  to  rouse  England  to 
a  sense  of  her  failure  and  to  cause  her  to  put 
first  things  first.  He  said,  "In  some  far-away 
and  yet  undreamt-of  hour  I  can  imagine  that 
England  may  cast  all  thoughts  of  possessive 
wealth  back  to  the  barbaric  nations  among 
whom  they  first  arose;  and  that  while  the 
sands  of  the  Indus  and  the  adamant  of  Gol- 
conda  may  yet  stiffen  the  housings  of  a  charger 
and  flash  from  the  turbans  of  a  slave,  she,  as 


JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER         21 

a  Christian  mother,  may  at  last  be  able  to 
attain  the  virtues  of  a  heathen  one  and  be 
able  to  lead  forth  her  sons  saying,  'These  are 
My  Jewels.'  " 

It  is  much  easier  to  find  in  the  writings  of 
Ruskin  eloquent,  helpful,  soul-stirring,  ideal- 
kindling  sermons  than  it  is  to  find  the  out 
lines  of  his  theology.  He  was  far  from  being 
a  systematic  thinker.  It  is  hard  to  compress 
into  stern  syllogisms  the  fine  frenzy  of  the 
poet.  Until  he  was  forty  years  of  age  his 
theology  was  the  softened  Calvinism  which  he 
inherited  from  his  parents.  He  was  in  Oxford 
in  the  days  of  the  Tractarian  movement,  but 
was  absolutely  untouched  by  it.  He  was  al 
ways  more  interested  in  conclusions  than  he 
was  in  the  processes  by  which  they  were 
attained.  But  about  1860  he  became  very 
much  unsettled  in  regard  to  the  thought 
foundations  of  his  religious  life.  Had  this 
inevitable  readjustment  come  earlier,  it  would 
have  been  much  less  painful.  To  analyze  his 
later  theology  would  be  difficult.  But  we  do 
know  that  he  became  fired  with  an  even 
greater  passion  for  righteousness  and  justice. 
His  love  of  good  became  more  fervent  and  his 
hatred  of  evil  more  intense.  With  even  greater 
frequency  he  recurred  to  Christ  and  his  teach 
ings.  In  the  introduction  to  his  Notes  on  the 


22        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

Construction  of  Sheepfolds  he  remarks,  "Many 
persons  will  probably  find  fault  with  me  for 
publishing  opinions  which  are  not  new;  but 
I  shall  bear  the  blame  contentedly  believing 
that  opinions  on  this  subject  could  hardly  be 
just  if  they  were  not  eighteen  hundred  years 
old."  His  theology,  unsystematic  as  it  may  be, 
is  distinctively  Christocentric. 

Few  writers  quote  the  Bible  so  frequently 
or  so  effectively.  Some  of  his  noblest  passages 
are  almost  biblical  paraphrases.  -The  last 
paragraph  of  the  second  paper  of  Sesame  and 
Lilies  is  a  notable  example  of  this.  In  Praeterita 
he  gives  a  list  of  the  chapters  which  his  mother 
with  the  greatest  exactness  compelled  him  to 
memorize.  He  says  that  in  this  way  his 
mother  "established  my  soul  in  life,"  and  adds 
the  following  comment:  "And  truly,  though  I 
have  picked  up  the  elements  of  a  little  further 
knowledge — in  mathematics,  meteorology,  and 
the  like,  in  after  life — and  owe  not  a  little  to 
the  teaching  of  many  people,  this  maternal 
installation  of  my  mind  in  the  property  of 
chapters,  I  count  very  confidently  the  most 
precious,  and,  on  the  whole,  the  one  essential 
part  of  all  my  education."  To  say  the  least, 
such  a  statement  is  not  without  profound 
pedagogical  significance.  It,  moreover,  helps  us 
to  understand  the  dominating  forces  in  the 


JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER         23 

life  and   writings   of  Ruskin.     He  was  most 
emphatically  a  biblical  preacher. 

He  has  been  criticized  for  his  unrestrained 
language  of  denunciation.  He  speaks  of 
London,  the  home  of  Chaucer  and  Milton,  the 
city  which  Johnson  loved  and  Turner  painted, 
as  "that  great  foul  city,  rattling,  growling, 
smoking,  stinking,  a  ghastly  heap  of  fermenting 
brickwork,  pouring  out  poison  at  every  pore." 
In  common  with  Carlyle,  Ruskin,  it  must  be 
admitted,  excelled  in  the  richness  of  his  vo 
cabulary  of  vituperation  But  in  the  Book 
which  Ruskin  knew  above  all  others  we  find 
that  the  major  and  minor  prophets  spoke  words 
of  undiluted  strength,  and  that  Peter  and 
Paul  were  not  afraid  to  speak  out.  Then, 
too,  there  was  One  greater  than  prophet  or 
apostle  who  denounced  the  formalistic,  hypo 
critical  scribes  and  Pharisees  in  words  so  fraught 
with  fury  that  language  almost  breaks  down 
beneath  their  weight.  To  hate  wrong  is  the 
mark  of  a  real  Christian.  A  man  tremendously 
in  earnest  in  the  presence  of  "ignorance,  ani- 
mality,  and  brutemindedness"  does  not  keep 
silent  or  speak  in  accents  of  cowardly  mild 
ness.  In  no  age  does  the  prophet  of  the  living 
God  quail  before  enthroned  evil. 

The   heart   of  John   Ruskin   was   strangely 
warmed  within  him.     Few  men  have  been  so 


24         JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

impressed  with  the  high  seriousness  of  life. 
He  believed  that  the  issues  of  life  and  death 
depended  upon  the  gospel.  "Precious  indeed 
those  thirty  minutes  by  which  the  teacher 
tries  to  get  at  the  separate  hearts  of  a  thousand 
men,  to  convince  them  of  all  their  weaknesses, 
to  shame  them  for  all  their  sin,  to  warn  them 
of  all  their  dangers,  to  try  them  by  this  way 
and  that,  to  stir  the  hard  fastenings  of  the 
doors  where  the  Master  himself  has  stood  and 
knocked,  yet  none  opened,  and  to  call  at  the 
openings  of  those  dark  streets  where  Wisdom 
herself  hath  stretched  forth  her  hands  and  no 
man  regarded.  Thirty  minutes  to  raise  the 
dead  in."  Nowhere  do  we  find  a  better  sum 
mary  of  what  for  over  half  a  century,  mis 
understood,  assailed,  ridiculed,  and  thwarted, 
John  Ruskin  tried  to  do.  He  was  a  preacher 
of  the  life  abundant,  a  soldier  beneath  the 
ensign  of  the  King  of  kings. 


II 

JONATHAN  EDWARDS 

MOST  great  men  live  in  the  future,  but 
Jonathan  Edwards  was  the  child  of  the  past. 
Most  emphatically  he  was  not  one  of  the  great 
radicals  who  overthrow  long-entrenched  sys 
tems  and  lay  new  foundations  upon  which 
after  generations  can  build.  On  the  contrary, 
he  used  his  transcendent  genius  in  a  vain 
attempt  to  revitalize  a  dead  philosophy  and  a 
fast-dying  creed.  But  in  spite  of  this,  by  the 
dominating  force  of  a  mighty  intellect,  he 
towers  to-day,  among  our  American  thinkers, 
like  a  colossus. 

In  the  early  days  of  the  New  England 
theocracy  the  clergy  were  the  lords  of  the  land. 
The  New  England  parson  in  his  black  Geneva 
cloak  and  close-fitting  black  velvet  cap  was  an 
autocrat  of  the  autocrats.  He  ruled  his  little 
world  with  a  scepter  of  iron.  From  the  high 
pulpit  in  the  cold  and  cheerless  meetinghouse 
he  preached  the  militant,  unyielding  gospel  of 
John  Knox  and  John  Calvin  with  an  almost 
oracular  authority.  Woe  to  the  unlucky  wight 

25 


26        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

who  dared  to  criticize  the  Lord's  anointed. 
His  tongue  was  in  danger  of  a  cleft  stick.  In 
church  and  state  the  preacher  reigned  supreme. 
But  Edwards,  born  in  1703,  came  into  the 
world  just  in  time  to  see,  as  a  young  man, 
the  Mathers,  son  and  father,  fight  their  last 
losing  battle  for  the  old  faith  and  the  old 
theocracy.  It  would  not  be  altogether  amiss 
to  say  that  Jonathan  Edwards  was  the  suc 
cessor  of  Cotton  Mather  as  the  champion  of 
the  iron-clad  Calvinism  of  an  earlier  day. 

Dr.  O.  W.  Holmes  used  to  refer  to  himself 
as  a  "Brahman  of  the  Brahmans."  Edwards 
also  could  boast  of  a  priestly  ancestry.  His 
father,  Timothy  Edwards,  was  for  sixty  years 
minister  of  the  East  Parish  of  Windsor,  Con 
necticut,  and  his  maternal  grandfather,  Sol 
omon  Stoddard,  of  Northampton,  was  one  of 
the  ecclesiastical  giants  of  his  day.  Perhaps 
it  is  not  altogether  an  unmixed  evil  that  the 
usual  anecdotes,  both  real  and  fabulous,  of 
Edwards's  youthful  days  are  lacking.  All 
signs,  however,  point  to  extraordinary  intel 
lectual  precocity.  At  the  age  of  twelve  he 
wrote  a  letter  refuting  with  some  skill  the 
idea  of  the  materiality  of  the  soul.  The  same 
year  he  produced  an  elaborate  account  of  the 
habits  of  the  spider  based  on  his  own  observa 
tion.  At  thirteen  he  entered  Yale  College, 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  27 

which  had  been  founded  about  fifteen  years 
before.  In  speaking  of  the  foundation  of  this 
ancient  New  England  institution  President 
Hadley  says:  "Yale  College  was  founded  after 
a  fashion,  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth 
century  along  the  north  shore  of  Long  Island 
Sound.  For  many  years  it  was  difficult  to  say 
what  it  was  and  where  it  belonged."  During 
Edwards's  college  days  his  Alma  Mater  was 
somewhat  of  a  pilgrim  and  a  stranger  on  the 
face  of  the  earth,  moving  from  one  town  to 
another  every  year  or  so.  But  such  as  the 
college  was,  Edwards  followed  it  faithfully  and 
remained  with  it  two  years  as  a  special  student 
after  he  received  his  first  degree  in  1719.  And, 
in  addition,  for  two  years  (1724-1726)  he 
was  a  tutor  at  Yale  and,  according  to  Dr. 
Stiles,  was  one  of  the  "pillar"  tutors.  We 
read  elsewhere  that  he  filled  and  sustained 
his  office  with  great  ability,  dignity,  and 
honor. 

As  we  turn  the  meager  pages  which  tell  of 
his  earlier  years  we  sometimes  feel  a  human 
curiosity  to  know  more.  Was  he  ever  a  real 
boy  when  he  ought  to  have  been  such,  or 
was  he  simply  a  miniature  old  man?  What 
had  he  in  common  with  the  rollicking  student 
of  to-day?  Was  his  soul  so  warped  by  a  harsh 
theology  and  his  mind  so  debauched  with 


28        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

intellectuality  that  his  sympathies  were  narrow 
and  his  life  cabined,  cribbed,  confined?  Some 
times  we  are  inclined  to  give  one  answer  and 
sometimes  another,  but  at  the  best  we  can 
do  little  more  than  idly  speculate.  In  regard 
to  the  inner  life  of  Jonathan  Edwards,  however, 
we  do  not  have  to  grope  long  in  darkness, 
and  when  we  know  the  facts  of  a  man's  soul- 
life  we  cannot  but  know  what  manner  of  a 
man  he  was  among  his  fellows. 

We  read  in  his  diary  these  significant  words: 
"On  Jan.  12,  1723,  I  made  a  solemn  dedication 
of  myself  to  God  and  wrote  it  down,  giving 
up  myself  and  all  that  I  had  to  God,  to  be  for 
the  future  in  no  respect  my  own;  to  act  as 
one  that  had  no  right  to  himself  in  any  respect 
and  solemnly  vowed  to  take  God  for  my  whole 
portion  and  felicity,  looking  on  nothing  else 
as  any  part  of  my  happiness,  nor  acting  as  if 
it  were;  and  his  law  for  the  constant  rule  of 
my  obedience,  engaging  to  fight  with  all  my 
might  against  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the 
devil,  to  the  end  of  my  life."  Nor  was  he 
content  with  a  devotion  to  simply  theological 
abstractions.  He  made  resolution  after  resolu 
tion  affecting  every  phase  of  his  life.  His 
writings  during  the  Yale  period  show  him  to 
be  a  high-minded  young  man  fighting,  as 
many  a  youth  has  done,  the  old  battle  between 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  29 

the  promptings  of  his  heart  and  the  teachings 
of  the  faith  of  his  fathers.  As  we  read  his 
resolutions  we  see  that  one  of  his  incentives 
for  piety  was  the  not  particularly  noble  thought 
of  the  advantages  which  it  would  win  for 
him  in  the  next  world.  The  ascetic  tendency 
which  was  such  a  dominant  characteristic  of 
New  England  life  finds  full  expression  in  his 
earlier  writing.  Some  of  his  resolutions  for 
self-mortification  could  have  been  written  by 
a  Saint  Simeon  Stylites.  These  characteristics 
in  the  young  New  Englander  are  not  hard  to 
explain  in  the  light  of  his  environment,  but 
other  phases  of  his  intellectual  life  have  proved 
almost  inexplicable  to  his  biographers. 

Now  and  then  we  find  in  his  early  writings 
paragraphs  which  could  have  well  been  written 
by  the  "God-intoxicated"  Spinoza.  There  is 
little  in  common  between  the  teachings  of 
the  inspired  Hebrew  and  the  harsh  Augustinian 
Calvinism  with  which  Edwards  had  been  in 
doctrinated  from  his  earliest  youth.  The  fact 
that  Edwards,  who  had  never  read  Spinoza, 
was  able  to  strike  such  a  deep  philosophical 
note  is  additional  evidence  of  the  transcendent 
genius  of  this  wonderful  boy.  Yet  Spinoza 
was  not  the  philosopher  with  whom  Edwards 
had  the  most  in  common.  The  writings  of 
his  early  twenties  are  strongly  tinctured  with 


30        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

Berkeleyan  idealism.  As  to  whether  he  had 
ever  read  the  works  of  the  English  philosopher 
has  long  been  a  mooted  question.  But  within 
recent  years  the  best  authorities  have  lent  the 
weight  of  their  influence  to  the  negative  side. 
Consequently,  if  we  accept  their  dictums,  we 
have  another  illustration  of  the  marked  original 
ity  which  characterized  Edwards  in  the  days 
of  his  young  manhood.  Nevertheless,  it  matters 
little  whether  or  not  he  read  Berkeley.  At 
this  period  of  his  life  he  showed  a  depth  of 
insight  which  makes  us  wonder  what  his  con 
tribution  to  the  world  of  thought  would  have 
been  had  he  devoted  his  life  to  philosophy. 
Yet  even  then  he  was  preeminently  not  a 
metaphysician  but  a  theologian.  Years  after 
ward,  in  speaking  of  the  intellectual  and 
spiritual  battles  of  these  days,  he  said:  "From 
my  childhood  up  my  mind  had  been  full  of 
objections  against  the  doctrine  of  God's  sov 
ereignty  in  choosing  whom  he  would  to  eternal 
life  and  rejecting  whom  he  pleased,  leaving 
them  eternally  to  perish  and  be  everlastingly 
tormented  in  hell.  It  used  to  appear  like  a 
horrible  doctrine  to  me.  I  remember  the  time 
very  well  when  I  seemed  to  be  convinced  and 
fully  satisfied  as  to  this  sovereignty  of  God, 
and  his  justice  in  thus  eternally  disposing  of 
men  according  to  his  sovereign  pleasure,  but 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  31 

never  could  give  an  account  how  or  by  what 
means  I  was  thus  convinced,  not  in  the  least 
imagining  at  the  time,  nor  a  long  time  after, 
that  there  was  any  extraordinary  influence  of 
God's  Spirit  in  it,  but  only  that  now  I  saw 
further,  and  my  mind  apprehended  the  justice 
and  reasonableness  of  it.  However,  my  mind 
rested  in  it,  and  it  put  an  end  to  all  these  cavils 
and  questioning."  In  speaking  of  these  words 
Dr.  Allen  says:  "So  Edwards  entered  into  the 
heritage  of  his  fathers  and  made  the  Puritan 
consciousness  his  own.  There  are  traces  of 
an  inward  rebellion  which  was  suppressed. 
There  is  reason  to  believe  that  his  success 
was  not  so  complete  as  he  fancied  in  eradi 
cating  his  earlier  thought.  But  the  criti 
cal  point  of  the  transition  is  not  explained. 
It  is  buried  out  of  sight  in  silence  and 
darkness." 

From  this  time  forth  Jonathan  Edwards 
stood  in  the  front  ranks  of  the  champions  of 
the  old  New  England  theology.  In  1727  he 
was  ordained  at  Northampton  as  copastor  with 
his  distinguished  grandfather,  the  Rev  Solomon 
Stoddard.  To  the  work  of  this  parish,  where  he 
remained  for  twenty-three  years,  he  gave  the 
best  of  his  life.  He  was  anything  but  a  lazy 
preacher.  He  was  extremely  conscientious  in 
the  performance  of  his  parish  duties,  and  he 


32        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

made  it  a  point  to  spend  thirteen  hours  a  day 
in  his  study.  His  solitary  walks  and  rides 
were  his  sole  diversion.  Even  then  the  busy 
mind  did  not  rest.  He  often  came  home  from 
his  journeys  with  his  coat  decorated  with  small 
pieces  of  paper  on  which  he  had  written  the 
thoughts  which  had  come  to  him  while  away 
from  his  study. 

He  was  never  a  popular  preacher  in  the 
ordinary  sense  of  the  word.  His  sermons  are, 
of  course,  limited  by  the  arbitrary  homiletical 
divisions  of  his  day.  They  are  most  appall 
ingly  logical  and,  to  put  it  very  mildly,  their 
theology  does  not  attract  the  twentieth-cen 
tury  reader.  Yet  the  fire  of  life  and  reality 
still  burns  in  them.  His  most  widely  heralded 
sermon  is  his  famous  fire-and-brimstone  pro 
duction,  "Sinners  in  the  Hands  of  an  Angry 
God."  But,  contrary  to  the  generally  accepted 
belief,  this  is  not  one  of  his  characteristic 
productions.  He  was  not  a  brazen-lunged 
Boanerges  thundering  forth  edicts  of  terror 
against  a  lost  world.  Neither  the  man  nor  the 
preacher  can  be  judged  by  his  theology.  His 
latest  biographer  says,  "He  was  at  his  best 
and  greatest,  most  original  and  creative  when 
he  described  the  divine  love."  He  was  a  poet 
as  well  as  a  theologian.  In  one  of  his  sermor 
we  read:  "When  we  behold  the  fragrant  re 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  33 

and  lily,  we  see  His  love  and  purity.  So  the 
green  trees  and  fields  and  singing  of  birds  are 
the  emanations  of  His  infinite  joy  and  benig 
nity.  The  loveliness  and  naturalness  of  trees 
and  vines  are  shadows  of  His  beauty  and 
loveliness."  His  favorite  text  was,  "I  am  the 
Rose  of  Sharon  and  the  Lily  of  the  Valley,'* 
and  his  favorite  words  were  "sweet  and 
bright." 

New  England  asceticism  did  not  mean 
celibacy.  A  few  months  after  his  ordination 
Edwards  brought  to  Northampton  as  his  bride 
the  beautiful  and  saintly  Sarah  Pierpont. 
Several  years  before,  about  her,  he  had  written 
the  following  memorable  passage: 

"They  say  that  there  is  a  young  lady  in 
New  Haven  who  is  beloved  of  that  great  Being 
who  made  and  rules  the  world  and  that  there 
are  certain  seasons  in  which  this  great  Being, 
in  some  way  or  other  invisible,  comes  to  her 
and  fills  her  mind  with  exceeding  sweet  delight, 
and  that  she  hardly  cares  for  anything  except 
to  meditate  on  him;  that  she  expects  after  a 
while  to  be  received  up  where  he  is,  to  be 
raised  up  out  of  the  world  and  caught  up  into 
heaven,  being  assured  that  he  loves  her  too 
well  to  let  her  remain  at  a  distance  from  him 
always.  She  will  sometimes  go  about  from 
place  to  place  singing  sweetly;  and  seems  to 


34        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

be  always  full  of  joy  and  pleasure,  and  no  one 
knows  for  what.  She  loves  to  be  alone,  walk 
ing  hi  the  fields  and  groves  and  seems  to  have 
some  one  invisible  always  conversing  with 
her."  Mrs.  Edwards  proved  a  real  helpmeet 
to  her  husband  and  as  his  reputation  spread 
throughout  the  colony  her  name  was  always 
associated  with  his.  Of  her  an  old  writer  says : 
"She  paid  a  becoming  deference  to  her  husband; 
she  spared  no  pains  in  conforming  to  his  in 
clinations  and  rendering  everything  in  the 
family  agreeable  and  pleasant,  accounting  it 
her  greatest  glory,  and  that  wherein  she  could 
best  serve  God  and  her  generation,  to  be  the 
means  in  this  way  of  promoting  his  usefulness 
and  happiness.  And  no  person  of  discern 
ment  could  be  conversant  in  the  family  with 
out  observing  and  admiring  the  perfect  har 
mony,  the  mutual  love  and  esteem  that 
subsisted  between  them."  In  some  ways  the 
world  was  not  very  kind  to  Edwards.  There 
were  times  when  poverty  and  persecution 
seemed  to  be  his  only  reward.  Believing  as 
he  did,  he  could  not  help  thinking  that  he 
had  fallen  upon  evil  days.  Yet  we  cannot 
help  feeling  glad  that  for  him  the  tragedy  of 
existence  was  relieved  by  a  beautiful  home 
life  and  the  presence  of  one  able  and  willing 
to  help  bear  his  burdens. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  35 

"In  the  church  of  the  wilderness  Edwards  wrought, 
Shaping  his  creed  at  the  forge  of  thought; 
And  with  Thor's  own  hammer  welded  and  bent 
The  iron  links  of  his  argument, 
Which  strove  to  grasp  in  its  mighty  span 
The  purpose  of  God  and  the  fate  of  man! 
Yet  faithful  still  in  his  daily  round 
To  the  weak  and  the  poor  and  sin-sick  found, 
The  schoolman's  lore  and  the  casuist  art 
Drew  warmth  and  life  from  his  fervent  heart. 
Had  he  not  seen  in  the  solitudes 
Of  his  deep  and  dark  Northampton  woods 
A  vision  of  love  about  him  fall? 
Not  the  blinding  splendor  which  fell  on  Saul, 
But  the  tenderer  glory  that  rests  on  them 
Who  walk  in  the  New  Jerusalem; 
Where  never  the  sun  or  moon  are  known 
But  the  Lord  and  his  love  are  the  light  alone! 
And  watching  the  sweet,  still  countenance 
Of  the  wife  of  his  bosom  rapt  in  trance, 
Had  he  not  treasured  each  broken  word 
Of  the  mystical  wonder  seen  and  heard; 
And  loved  the  beautiful  dreamer  more 
That  thus  to  the  desert  of  earth  she  bore 
Clusters  of  Eshcol  from  Canaan's  shore?" 

Independently  of  his  personal  renown  the 
ministry  of  Edwards  in  the  beautiful  old  New 
England  town  of  Northampton  occupies  an 
important  place  in  the  ecclesiastical  history  of 
New  England  on  account  of  the  mighty  re 
vival,  known  as  "The  Great  Awakening," 
which  visited  the  parish  in  1741.  It  was  in 


36        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

this  movement  that  the  New  England  Cal- 
vinist  was  associated  with  Whitefield,  the 
golden-mouthed  Chrysostom  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  Much  has  been  written  in  regard 
to  "The  Great  Awakening,"  particularly  in 
reference  to  the  excesses  which  characterized  it. 
There  is,  however,  ample  evidence  to  prove 
that  all  of  the  influences  of  this  revival  were 
not  negative.  Beyond  the  peradventure  of  a 
doubt  it  "revitalized  the  dying  orthodoxy  of 
New  England  and  turned  the  minds  of  many 
from  the  things  that  are  of  the  earth  to  the 
eternal  verities." 

In  some  quarters  nevertheless  Edwards  was 
severely  criticized  for  some  of  the  methods  which 
he  used  during  the  great  spiritual  upheaval. 
He  was  blamed  for  "frightening  poor,  innocent 
little  children  with  talk  of  hell-fire  and  damna 
tion."  And  no  matter  how  sympathetic  our 
attitude,  we  must  admit  that  some  of  his 
writings  lend  color  to  such  accusations.  In 
speaking  of  children  he  says,  "They  are  young 
vipers,  and  are  infinitely  more  hateful  than 
vipers,  and  are  in  a  most  miserable  condition 
as  well  as  grown  persons;  and  they  are  naturally 
very  senseless  and  stupid,  being  born  as  the 
wild  ass's  colt,  and  need  much  to  awaken 
them."  This  they  doubtless  got,  for  we  have 
ample  evidence  that  the  doctrine  of  fire-and- 


37 

brimstone  was  an  important  phase  of  Edwards's 
theology.  Here  it  might  not  be  amiss  to  quote 
from  his  best-known  sermon,  "Sinners  in  the 
Hands  of  an  Angry  God":  "The  God  that  holds 
you  over  the  pit  of  hell,  much  as  one  holds 
a  spider  or  some  loathsome  insect  over  the 
fire,  abhors  you  and  is  dreadfully  provoked; 
his  wrath  toward  you  burns  like  fire;  he  looks 
upon  you  as  worthy  of  nothing  else  but  to  be 
cast  into  the  fire;  he  is  of  purer  eyes  than  to 
bear  to  have  you  in  his  sight;  you  are  ten 
thousand  times  more  abominable  in  his  eyes 
than  the  most  hateful  venomous  serpent  is  in 
ours.  0  sinner!  consider  the  fearful  danger 
you  are  in:  it  is  a  great  furnace  of  wrath,  a 
wide  bottomless  pit,  full  of  fire  of  wrath  that 
you  are  held  over  in  the  hand  of  that  God, 
whose  wrath  is  provoked  and  incensed  as  much 
against  you  as  against  many  of  the  damned 
in  hell.  You  hang  by  a  slender  thread  with 
the  flames  of  divine  wrath  flashing  about  it, 
and  ready  to  singe  it  and  burn  it  asunder." 
Recourse  to  the  sermons  of  the  shepherd  of 
the  Northampton  flock  show  that  at  this 
period  the  people  of  that  village  were  very 
frequently  regaled  with  pabulum  of  this  kind. 
We  could  possibly  find  here  an  explanation 
of  some  of  the  indisputable  evils  which  fol 
lowed  "The  Great  Awakening." 


345936 


38        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

But  within  a  couple  of  years  the  village 
resumed  its  ordinary  tranquillity.  Later,  how 
ever,  a  bitter  church  war  between  priest  and 
people  burst  with  almost  unrestrained  fury 
upon  the  little  parish.  To-day  the  village  of 
Northampton  is  most  heartily  ashamed  of  its 
ungenerous  treatment  of  the  most  distinguished 
man  who  ever  dwelt  within  its  borders.  There 
is  something  nevertheless  to  be  said  on  their 
side  of  the  question.  One  of  Edwards's  ad 
miring  biographers  speaks  of  him  as  "thorough 
in  the  government  of  his  children."  Sir  Leslie 
Stephen  says:  "He  adopted  the  plan,  less 
popular  now  than  then,  and  even  more  de 
cayed  in  America  than  in  England,  of  'thor 
oughly  subduing'  his  children  as  soon  as  they 
showed  any  tendency  to  self-will.  He  was  a 
'great  enemy*  to  all  Vain  amusements,'  and 
even  after  his  children  had  grown  up  he  en 
forced  their  abstinence  from  such  'pernicious 
practice'  and  never  allowed  them  to  be  out 
after  nine  at  night.  Any  gentleman,  we  are 
happy  to  add,  was  given  proper  opportunities 
for  courting  his  daughters  after  consulting 
then-  parents,  but  on  condition  of  conforming 
strictly  to  the  family  regulations.  This  Puri 
tan  discipline  appears  to  have  succeeded  with 
Edwards's  own  family;  but  a  gentleman  with 
'flacid  solids,  rapid  fluids,'  and  a  fervent  be- 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  39 

lief  in  hell-fire  is  seldom  appreciated  by  the 
youth  even  of  a  Puritan  village."1 

Edwards  brought  charges  against  a  number 
of  prominent  young  people  of  his  congregation, 
accusing  them  of  reading  improper  literature, 
very  probably  Richardson's  Pamela.  These 
accusations,  involving  practically  all  of  the 
prominent  families  in  the  community,  set  the 
town  in  a  blaze.  At  the  same  time  a  more 
serious  battle  was  being  waged  as  to  who 
was  eligible  for  admission  to  the  Lord's  Supper. 
To  enter  at  length  at  this  time  into  the  in 
tricacies  of  a  church  quarrel  in  a  New  England 
village  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  cen 
tury  would  not  be  particularly  edifying.  We 
shall  content  ourselves  with  chronicling  the 
result.  Edwards  was  dismissed  from  his  par 
ish  by  a  majority  of  more  than  two  hundred 
to  twenty,  "a  martyr  to  his  severe  sense  of 
discipline."  Thus  at  the  age  of  forty-seven 
he  found  himself,  with  no  means  and  a  large 
family,  turned  adrift.  It  takes  the  night  to 
bring  out  the  stars;  it  takes  adversity  to  bring 
out  the  best  that  is  in  a  man.  In  his  hour 
of  darkness  the  frail,  persecuted  preacher  never 
looked  back  but  boldly  set  out  to  make  the 
best  of  things  as  they  were.  Friends  came  to 
his  aid;  there  were  several  pulpits  ready  to 

'Printed  by  permission  of  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  Publishers. 


40        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

accept  his  services;  one  call  came  from  far 
away  Scotland.  But  for  some  inexplicable 
reason  the  position  which  he  accepted  was 
that  of  missionary  to  the  Indians  at  Stock- 
bridge,  Massachusetts.  There  is  something 
both  of  the  comic  and  the  tragic  in  the  idea 
of  the  great  Calvinistic  logician  attempting  to 
teach  the  rudiments  of  Christianity  to  the 
copper-colored  children  of  the  sun.  It  is 
rather  hard  to  decide  though  whom  we  most 
pity,  Edwards  or  the  Indians.  Stephen  says: 
"He  has  remarked  pathetically  in  one  of  his 
writings  on  the  very  poor  prospect  open  to 
the  Houssatunnuck  Indians,  if  their  salvation 
depended  on  the  study  of  the  evidence  of 
Christianity.  And  if  Edwards  preached  upon 
the  topics  of  which  his  mind  was  fullest,  their 
case  would  have  been  still  harder.  A  sermon 
in  the  Houssatunnuck  language,  if  Edwards 
ever  acquired  that  tongue,  upon  predestina 
tion,  the  differences  between  the  Arminian  and 
the  Calvinist  schemes,  liberty  of  indifference, 
and  other  such  doctrines,  would  hardly  be  an 
mproving  performance.'* 

Whatever  its  influence  upon  the  lives  of  the 
Indians,  Edwards's  exile  in  the  wilderness  was 
an  important  period  of  his  life.  Here  it  was 
that  he  wrote  his  famous  treatise  upon  the 
Freedom  of  the  Will,  which  can  be  regarded 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  41 

as  one  of  the  literary  sensations  of  the  century. 
In  regard  to  this  essay  there  has  been  much 
darkening  of  council  by  words  without  knowl 
edge.  Fulsome  laudation  and  wholesale  con 
demnation  together  have  been  its  portion. 
For  a  couple  of  generations  it  has  been  the 
fashion  to  speak  of  it  as  a  monumental  work 
with  whose  conclusion  no  one  agrees,  but 
containing  arguments  which  none  can  dispute. 
A  little  analysis  of  the  work  itself,  however, 
conclusively  proves  that  there  is  absolutely  no 
need  of  such  a  cowardly  surrender  to  Calvin 
ism.  At  the  outset,  even  taking  it  for  granted 
that  we  could  find  no  flaw  in  Edwards's 
logic  that  would  not  prove  the  correctness  of 
his  reasoning,  it  would  simply  be  an  evidence 
of  our  unfortunate  inadeptness  at  the  dis 
covery  of  verbal  chicanery.  To  unravel  all  of 
the  caustical  intricacies  of  the  essay  on  the 
Will  would  simply  be  as  profitable  as  the 
solving  of  the  puzzle  in  the  old  syllogism  in 
which  David  informs  us  that  all  men  are  liars. 
Life  is  a  little  bit  too  big  to  be  compressed 
into  a  few  pedantic  syllogisms. 

But  there  is  no  earthly  reason  for  assuming 
the  technical  correctness  of  the  reasoning  in 
this  marvelous  analysis  of  the  fundamental 
doctrine  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers.  In  short, 
Edwards  argues  that  everything  has  a  cause, 


42        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

that  we  select  one  thing  rather  than  another 
because  we  are  influenced  by  our  strongest 
motive.  The  will,  being  determined  by  the 
strongest  motive,  is  not  free.  In  speaking  of 
this  argument  Dr.  Charles  F.  Richardson,  of 
Dartmouth,  says:  "Its  practical  value  is  nil. 
Upon  the  thoughts,  words,  and  deeds  of  life 
it  exerts  no  effect.  Before  one  choose  A  or 
B,  it  is  true,  he  must  make  up  his  mind  which 
to  choose;  having  chosen,  perhaps  he  cannot 
choose  the  other;  at  any  rate,  he  cannot  have 
chosen  other  than  he  did  choose.  What 
follows  as  to  his  real  freedom  of  choice  in  the 
first  place?  Practically  nothing.  Can  a  man, 
before  choosing,  select  A  or  B  at  will?  Yes, 
unless  he  is  a  puppet,  and  no  subtlety  or 
nullification  of  words  can  make  this  other 
than  a  fact.  It  was  by  a  free  act  that  Edwards 
determined  to  write  his  treatise.  Writing  it 
in  Stockbridge,  he  could  not  also  write  it 
elsewhere.  And  in  spite  of  all  its  evident  and 
potent  environment,  the  completed  volume 
was  the  work  neither  of  chemical  forces  merely, 
nor  the  Fates,  nor  of  the  pen  of  God." 

Edwards  tried  to  solve  an  unsolvable  prob 
lem.  Most  of  us  are  satisfied  with  the  dictum 
of  bluff  old  Samuel  Johnson,  "We  know  we're 
free  and  that's  the  end  of  it."  Man's  vision 
is  limited.  He  cannot  see  all  sides  of  truth. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  43 

It  is  true  that 

"There's  a  divinity  that  shapes  our  ends, 
Rough-hew  them  how  we  will"; 

but  it  is  also  true  that 

"Our  wills  are  ours,  we  know  not  how; 
Our  wills  are  ours,  to  make  them  thine." 

The  essay  on  the  Will  is  an  attempt  to  achieve 
the  impossible.  We  may  wonder  at  the  mag 
nitude  of  the  work.  We  may  admire  it  for 
its  dialectical  skill,  but  at  the  best  we  can 
not  pronounce  it  other  than  a  magnificent 
failure. 

The  fame  which  Edwards  won  through  his 
opus  magnum  caused  him  to  be  appointed 
president  of  the  College  of  New  Jersey  at 
Princeton.  Upon  this  appointment  Dr.  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes  in  his  brilliant  but  very  un 
sympathetic  essay  makes  the  following  com 
ment:  "The  truth  is,  Edwards  belonged  in 
Scotland,  to  which  he  owed  so  much,  and  not 
to  New  England.  And  the  best  thing  that 
could  have  happened,  if  it  had  happened  early 
enough,  both  for  him  and  for  his  people,  was 
what  did  happen  after  a  few  years  of  residence 
at  Stockbridge,  where  he  went  after  leaving 
Northampton,  namely,  his  transfer  to  the 
presidency  of  the  College  at  Princeton,  New 


44        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

Jersey,  where  the  Scotch  theological  thistle  has 
always  flourished,  native  or  imported — a  stately 
flower  at  present,  with  fewer  prickles  and 
livelier  bloom  than  in  the  days  of  Boston,  the 
Ettrick  Shepherd  of  old."  Whether  he  was 
capable  of  winning  for  himself  a  place  by  the 
side  of  Witherspoon,  McCosh,  Wilson,  and  the 
other  great  presidents  of  Princeton  is  a  question 
upon  which  it  is  idle  to  speculate.  Less  than 
a  month  after  taking  up  the  duties  of  his  office 
he  died  of  smallpox  and  was  buried  in  the 
little  Presbyterian  graveyard  at  Princeton  by 
the  side  of  his  son-in-law  and  predecessor, 
Dr.  Aaron  Burr,  in  the  same  plot  in  which  later 
was  laid  all  that  was  mortal  of  another  Aaron 
Burr,  Edwards's  grandson,  who  brought  dis 
honor  to  an  honored  name. 

The  life  of  Edwards  is  full  of  contradic 
tions.  Genius  is  always  a  paradox.  Attempts 
to  analyze  it  are  mostly  futile.  But  the  fact 
remains  that  Jonathan  Edwards  was  great 
among  the  sons  of  men.  His  title  among 
American  thinkers  will  not  soon  be  disputed. 
On  a  memorial  tablet  on  the  wall  of  the  church 
of  the  parish  from  which  he  was  once  driven 
with  excoriations  we  read  these  words:  "The 
law  of  truth  was  in  his  mouth  and  iniquity 
was  not  found  in  his  lips.  He  walked  with 
me  in  peace  and  equity  and  did  turn  many 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  45 

away  from  iniquity."  And  he  of  whom  the 
words  can  be  truly  said  was  one  of  the  "friends 
and  aiders  of  those  who  live  the  life  of  the 
Spirit." 


Ill 

RADIANT  VIGOR 

IN  his  strong,  vivid,  and  inspiring  poem 
"Rugby  Chapel,"  Matthew  Arnold,  in  speaking 
of  his  father,  Dr.  Thomas  Arnold,  the  great 
master  of  Rugby,  says: 

"But  cold, 

Solemn,  unlighted,  austere 
Through  this  gathering  darkness,  arise 
The  chapel  walls,  in  whose  bound 
Thou,  my  father,  art  laid. 

"There  thou  dost  lie,  in  the  gloom 
Of  the  autumn  evening;  but  ah! 
That  word  'gloom'  to  my  mind 
Brings  thee  back  in  the  light 
Of  thy  radiant  vigor  again. 
In  the  gloom  of  November  we  passed 
Days  not  dark  by  thy  side; 
Seasons  impaired  not  the  ray 
Of  thy  buoyant  cheerfulness  clear." 

In  the  phrase  "radiant  vigor"  we  find 
epitomized  the  vital  personality  of  the  English 
schoolmaster,  who  to  the  youth  of  more  than 
one  generation  was  a  veritable  tower  of  strength, 
When  Thomas  Arnold  became  a  candidate  for 
the  Headmastership  of  Rugby,  it  was  pre- 
46 


RADIANT  VIGOR  47 

dieted  that  if  he  were  elected,  "he  would  change 
the  face  of  education  all  through  the  public 
schools  of  England."  This  he  did  not  do 
through  any  revolutionizing  of  the  scholar 
ship  of  his  day,  but,  rather,  by  the  contagion 
of  a  powerful  personality.  He  had  vigor  of 
body  and  vigor  of  soul.  It  must  be  admitted 
that  in  general  physical  vigor  is  the  basis  of 
all  strength.  A  strong  intellect  is  mostly 
found  in  a  strong  body.  Bodily  health  is 
conducive  to  a  genuine  spirituality.  It  is 
hard  for  a  dyspeptic  to  be  a  saint.  Samuel 
Johnson  once  said  in  his  blunt  way,  "Every 
man  is  a  rascal  when  he  is  sick."  Seldom  is 
the  radiant,  life-giving  personality  found  in 
the  tenement  of  clay  of  an  invalid.  No  longer 
do  we  believe  "mortification  of  the  flesh"  to 
be  an  act  of  piety. 

"Let  us  not  always  say, 
'Spite  of  this  flesh  to-day 
I  strove,  made  head,  gained  ground 
Upon  the  whole!' 
As  the  bird  wings  and  sings 
Let  us  cry,  'All  good  things 
Are  ours;  nor  soul  helps  flesh  more  now 
Than  flesh  helps  soul.'  " 

The  body  is  not  to  be  looked  upon  as  weight 
impeding  the  growth  of  the  soul  but,  rather, 
as  its  helper  and  ally. 


48        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

It  cannot,  however,  be  denied  that  in  re 
gard  to  the  power  of  a  strong  body  to  in 
vigorate  the  spirit  there  has  been  within 
recent  years  considerable  empty  verbalizing. 
In  some  circles  it  is  the  fashion  to  quote 
the  hopelessly  over-worked  proverb,  "Mens 
sano  in  corpore  sano"  as  meaning  that 
the  possession  of  a  sound  body  is  incon 
trovertible  evidence  of  the  presence  of  a 
sound  mind.  I  once  heard  an  address 
upon  what  the  speaker  called  "Muscular 
Christianity."  His  title  may  have  been  cor 
rect,  for  what  he  called  Christianity  was  most 
emphatically  neither  intellectual  nor  spiritual. 
Sometimes  the  much-vaunted  triangle  of  "body, 
mind,  and  spirit"  is  discussed  in  such  a  way 
as  to  cause  the  listener  to  believe  that  the 
first  line  of  this  hypothetical  figure  is  of  vastly 
more  importance  that  the  other  two.  But  in 
spite  of  the  callow  vaporing  of  those  who,  in 
the  worst  sense  of  the  phrase,  possess  "single- 
track"  minds,  health  of  body  as  a  factor  in 
the  development  of  the  soul  must  not  be 
minimized. 

"Radiant  vigor"  is  the  most  potent  force  of 
human  dynamics.  It  is  at  the  heart  of  all 
real  teaching.  Almost  everybody  who  writes 
or  speaks  along  educational  lines  has  his  own 
definition  of  education.  Is  there,  however, 


RADIANT  VIGOR  49 

any  of  these  formulations  which  comes  nearer 
to  hitting  the  nail  square  on  the  head  than 
Thomas  Carlyle's  scintillating  apothegm,  "Fire 
kindled  at  the  fire  of  living  fire"?  Real  teach 
ing  is  from  the  living,  through  the  living  and 
to  the  living.  No  pedagogical  course  can  make 
a  teacher  of  a  gerund-grinding  depersonalized 
pedant.  Neither  can  a  theological  seminary 
transform  such  an  one  into  a  real  preacher 
of  the  living  word.  The  radiantly  vigorous 
personality  is,  after  all,  the  outgrowth  of  a 
great  soul.  The  man  of  lean  soul  has  no  power 
of  inspiration.  Among  the  great  preachers  of 
the  last  century,  like  a  mountain  in  the  clear, 
cold  air  of  morning,  towers  the  radiant  figure 
of  Phillips  Brooks.  A  Japanese  student  at 
Harvard,  after  hearing  him  one  Sunday  morn 
ing  in  Trinity  Church,  wrote:  "Phillips  Brooks! 
What  struggling  souls  does  he  support  and 
strengthen!  What  a  depth  under  his  surplice, 
what  a  broadness  behind  his  prayer  book! 
After  a  draught  of  his  elixir  a  wayfarer  marches 
on  for  a  week  or  two  with  songs  upon  his  lips; 
the  rough  earth  with  all  its  mountains  and 
valleys  leveled  before  him."  More  than  one 
choice  youth  has  caught  new  gleams  of  the 
vision  splendid  as  through  Dr.  Allen's  biog 
raphy  he  comes  into  sympathetic  contact  with 
this  big-souled  prophet  of  the  invisible.  No 


50        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

man  stood  nearer  to  the  life  of  midnineteenth- 
century  America  than  Henry  Ward  Beecher. 
Eloquent,  magnanimous,  open-minded,  sym 
pathetic,  and  sincere,  he  spoke  not  alone  to 
the  congregation  of  Plymouth  Church  but  to 
the  American  people.  The  source  of  this 
Herculean  power  lay  in  a  personality  of  radiant 
charm  and  vigor.  As  George  William  Curtis 
once  said,  "How  few  of  us  can  keep  our  balance 
when  a  regal  soul  dashes  by."  Character  is 
not  taught  but  caught.  Human  better 
ment  comes  through  association  with  the 
best.  In  gauging  the  worth  of  a  life  it  can 
be  truly  said,  "So  much  personality,  so  much 
power." 

Little  is  there  which  a  man  can  do  without 
finding  his  personality  a  help  or  a  hindrance. 
For  example,  nervous,  sinewy  English  sentences 
are  never  written  by  nonentities.  The  carry 
ing  power  of  a  group  of  words  depends  upon 
the  man  behind  them.  An  assumed  vigor  of 
expression  on  the  part  of  a  weakling  becomes 
a  shriek.  The  red-blooded  virility  of  Rudyard 
Kipling  is  the  genuine  expression  of  the  man. 
The  numerous  pitiful  imitations  of  this  poet 
who,  at  his  best,  belongs  among  the  masters 
are  in  themselves  evidences  of  the  futility  of 
trying  to  acquire  the  art  of  writing  by  be 
ginning  at  the  wrong  end.  The  development  of 


RADIANT  VIGOR  51 

the  personality  is  the  first  step  in  the  making 
of  a  writer.  The  blundering  student  who 
really  says  something  which  is  the  outgrowth 
of  his  own  experience  has  greater  potentialities 
than  the  prim  miss  who  has  acquired  the 
ability  to  cover  several  pages  with  faultless 
nothings.  Nowhere  and  never  can  we  get 
away  from  what  we  are. 

What  an  individual  makes  of  himself  is  the 
final  criterion  of  the  success  or  failure  of  his 
life.  In  his  somewhat  raving  soliloquy  the 
youth  in  Tennyson's  "Locksley  Hall"  curses 
among  numerous  other  things  "the  gold  that 
gilds  the  straighten'd  forehead  of  the  fool." 
Yet  in  the  long  run  no  amount  of  gilding  can 
hide  the  real  man.  Education  is  not  to  be 
measured  by  the  amount  of  knowledge  accumu 
lated  but,  rather,  in  terms  of  manhood  and 
womanhood.  It  is  not  what  we  say  or  what 
we  know  or  what  we  can  do  that  counts,  but 
what  we  are.  One  of  the  world's  most  com 
prehensive  truths  is  expressed  in  the  words, 
"As  a  man  thinketh  in  his  heart  so  is  he." 
An  individual's  thoughts  write  themselves  upon 
his  very  person.  He  who  in  thought  grovels 
in  the  sensual  mire  becomes  in  his  aspect 
coarse  and  animalistic.  To  concern  oneself 
year  after  year  with  worthless  trifles  makes  a 
man  puttering  and  pedantic.  The  virtue  of 


52         JOHN  RTJSKIN,  PREACHER 

economy  practiced  too  faithfully  becomes  a 
vice.  Thinking  in  terms  of  pennies  tends  to 
dwarf  the  mind  and  soul.  Constant  concern 
with  things  material  extirpates  the  power  of 
spiritual  insight.  Too  dominant  an  emphasis 
upon  the  financial  aspects  of  religion  unspir- 
itualizes  a  church.  The  preacher  who  measures 
success  in  terms  of  loaves  and  fishes  becomes 
a  contemptible  object.  We  have  it  on  good 
authority  that  there  is  no  place  for  the  money 
changer  in  the  temple  of  Jehovah.  Just  as 
true  to-day  as  when  they  were  first  uttered 
are  the  words  of  the  wise  man  of  old,  "Keep 
thy  heart  with  all  diligence,  for  out  of  it  are 
the  issues  of  life."  As  we  think,  we  are. 

In  H.  G.  Wells's  Mr.  Britling  Sees  It 
Through  we  find  an  indirect  tribute  to  Mat 
thew  Arnold  when  one  of  the  characters  de 
clares  that  England's  troubles  are  due  to  the 
fact  that  "we  didn't  listen  to  Matthew  Arnold." 
In  the  writings  of  this  Victorian  prophet  of 
"sweetness  and  light"  there  is  at  least  one 
thought  that  America  needs.  Arnold  laid 
special  stress  upon  the  ancient  Hellenic  ideal 
of  self-development,  which  teaches  that  the 
highest  due  of  man  is  to  "augment  the  ex 
cellence  of  his  nature  and  make  an  intelligent 
being  more  intelligent."  Some  one  may  ob 
ject,  saying,  "Is  it  not  the  duty  of  a  Christian 


RADIANT  VIGOR  53 

to  do  good  to  others?"  This  question  most 
certainly  deserves  an  affirmative  answer,  but 
before  we  try  to  make  others  better  and  to 
reform  the  world  in  general,  it  behooves  us  to 
have  ourselves  attained  a  reasonable  intellectual 
and  moral  stature.  The  world  cannot  be  re 
formed  or  evangelized  by  bunglers.  Capacity 
always  comes  before  achievement.  It  is  not 
alone  charity  that  begins  at  home.  All  prog 
ress  starts  with  the  individual.  "But  I  am  so 
anxious  to  save  souls,"  a  young  man  said  to 
President  Finney,  of  Oberlin,  during  an  inter 
view  in  which  the  youth  was  trying  to  justify 
his  plan  of  entering  the  ministry  without 
completing  his  education.  "Young  man,"  said 
the  President,  "if  the  Lord  had  wanted  you  to 
go  to  saving  souls  a  year  sooner,  he'd  have 
made  you  a  year  sooner." 

Sometimes  we  spend  so  much  time  cultivating 
our  neighbor's  gardens  that  weeds  run  riot  in 
our  own.  But  in  the  words  of  Thoreau  the  need 
is  for  men  who  are  "not  only  good,  but  good 
for  something."  Hours  used  in  self-improve 
ment  are  sometimes  spent  in  a  more  essentially 
religious  way  than  some  that  were  passed  in 
distributing  tracts.  It  was  Matthew  Arnold 
himself  who  spoke  of  Sophocles  as  being  one 
who  "saw  life  steadily  and  who  saw  it  whole." 
In  the  last  analysis  it  is  the  strong,  well- 


54         JOHN  RTJSKIN,  PREACHER 

balanced  individual  with  this  broad,  clear 
perspective  who  carries  forward  the  banner  of 
humanity.  Radiant  vigor  is  a  grace  never 
attained  by  those  who  see  but  one  aspect  of 
truth.  It  does  not  fall  as  the  gentle  rain  from 
heaven  upon  the  place  beneath.  Like  all  of 
the  other  real  attainments  of  life,  it  must  be 
paid  for  with  wisdom,  tolerance,  restraint,  and 
effort.  But  it  is  worth  the  price. 

The  man  who  has  this  dynamic  energizing 
power  is  as  strong  as  the  strongest.  He  is  a 
real  leader  of  the  host  of  mankind.  In  the 
same  noble  poem,  inspired  by  his  father's 
life  and  character,  the  poet  in  winged  words 
lays  his  wreath  of  laurel  upon  the  altar  of 
the  captains  in  the  army  which  fights  the 
battles  of  truth  and  light: 

"Then,  in  such  hour  of  need 
Of  your  fainting,  dispirited  race, 
Ye,  like  angels,  appear, 
Radiant  with  ardor  divine! 
Beacons  of  hope,  ye  appear! 
Languor  is  not  in  your  heart, 
Weakness  is  not  in  your  word, 
Weariness  not  on  your  brow. 
Ye  alight  in  our  van !    At  your  voice, 
Panic,  despair,  flee  away. 
Ye  move  through  the  ranks,  recall 
The  stragglers,  refresh  the  outworn, 
Praise,  reinspire  the  brave! 


RADIANT  VIGOR  55 

Order,  courage  return. 
Eyes  kindling,  and  prayers, 
Follow  your  steps  as  ye  go. 
Ye  fill  up  the  gaps  in  our  files, 
Strengthen  the  wavering  line, 
Stablish,  continue  our  march, 
On,  on  to  the  bound  of  the  waste, 
On,  to  the  city  of  God." 


IV 

THE  SPIRITUAL  MESSAGE  OF 
WHITTIER1 

DURING  the  years  in  which  Whittier  lived 
and  wrote,  the  hills  and  valleys  of  New  England 
were  resounding  with  the  tumult  and  shouting 
of  a  long-waged  ecclesiastical  conflict.  The 
old  order  was  changing,  yielding  place  to  the 
new.  The  harsh,  dogmatic,  logical,  positive 
Calvinism  of  an  earlier  day  was  inevitably 
reacting  into  a  nebulous  but  militant  Uni- 
tarianism.  Young  men  in  libraries  were  closing 
their  Paleys  and  grappling  with  the  intricacies 
of  a  Kantean  transcendentalism.  Still,  to  a 
large  degree,  unknown  in  Europe,  the  great 
est  book  of  the  nineteenth  century,  Sartor 
Resartus,  was  in  America  finding  readers 
among  men  of  light  and  leading  and  the  mighty 
message  of  the  flaming-hearted,  golden-mouthed 
prophet  of  Dumfries's  purple  moors  was  burn 
ing  its  way  into  the  souls  of  men.  From  the 
lecture  platform  Emerson  was  giving  to  in 
quiring  minds  a  somewhat  misty  and  shallow 

'The  selections  from  Whittier  are  used  by  permission  of  Houghton 
Mifflin  Company,  Publishers. 

56 


THE  MESSAGE  OF  WHITTIER      57 

philosophy,  but  a  vital  and  luminous  inter 
pretation  of  life.  The  scintillating  Dr.  Holmes 
•with  zest  was  tilting  his  shining  lance  against 
the  monstrosities  of  the  old  Calvinism.  The 
age  was  rife  with  subtle  questionings.  On 
every  side  could  be  heard  the  clash  of  creed 
and  the  babel  of  isms.  Emerson  said  that  the 
motto  of  Margaret  Fuller  was:  "I  don't  know 
where  I'm  going.  Follow  me."  And  not  a 
few  of  her  contemporaries  could  have  sounded 
the  same  slogan. 

But  in  the  religious  poetry  of  Whittier  we 
are  taken  far  away  from  the  world  of  dogma 
and  controversy.  His  grasp  of  religious  truth 
is  at  once  simple  and  comprehensive.  His 
message  is  essentially  spiritual  rather  than 
theological.  The  emphasis  is  upon  the  great 
elemental,  fundamental  truths  of  the  life  of 
the  Spirit.  Whittier's  muse  rises  with  wings 
as  eagle's  above  the  smoke  of  the  conflict. 
The  devotee  of  any  creed  can  find  solace  and 
refreshment  at  the  Valclusa  fountain  of  the 
genius  of  the  Quaker  poet. 

Whittier  only  among  our  great  American 
poets  was  not  a  Unitarian,  although  the 
Unitarianism  of  Holmes  and  Longfellow  was 
the  expression  of  a  revulsion  from  the  harsh 
creed  of  their  fathers  rather  than  a  denial  of 
the  deity  of  the  Christ.  To  claim  that  he  was 


58         JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

a  Unitarian  is  to  ignore  some  of  the  sweetest 
and  noblest  measures  in  our  literature.  But 
the  Christ  whom  he  worshiped  was  not  a  dead 
Christ  upon  whose  grave  the  silent  Syrian  stars 
look  down.  In  the  poem  "Our  Master"  we 
find  words  which  upon  the  wings  of  song  have 
carried  many  a  world-tossed,  sin-burdened  soul 
to  the  throne  of  God: 

"No  fable  old,  nor  mythic  lore, 

Nor  dream  of  bards  and  seers, 
No  dead  fact  stranded  on  the  shore 
Of  the  oblivious  years; 

"But  warm,  sweet,  tender,  even  yet 

A  present  help  is  He; 
And  faith  has  still  its  Olivet, 
And  love  its  Galilee. 

"The  healing  of  his  seamless  dress 

Is  by  our  beds  of  pain; 
We  touch  him  in  life's  throng  and  press, 
And  we  are  whole  again. 

"Through  him  the  first  fond  prayers  are  said 

Our  lips  of  childhood  frame, 

The  last  low  whispers  of  our  dead 

Are  burdened  with  his  name. 

"We  faintly  hear,  we  dimly  see, 
In  differing  phrase  we  pray; 
But,  dim  or  clear,  we  own  in  thee 
The  Light,  the  Truth,  the  Way!" 

"The  Meeting"  is  one  of  the  great  medi 
tative  poems  of  our  literature.    It  has  the  grand 


THE  MESSAGE  OF  WHITTIER      59 

old  virtue  of  sincerity.  Amid  the  perfumed 
brightness  of  the  summer  day  in  the  plain  little 
meetinghouse  the  farmer  folk  gather  in  silence 
to  be  still  and  know  that  God  is  God.  And 
for  them,  towering  above  all  others  like  a 
mountain  in  the  clear,  cold  air  of  morning, 
looms  one  great  truth: 

".  .  .  the  dear  Christ  dwells  not  afar, 
The  king  of  some  remoter  star. 
Listening,  at  times,  with  flattered  ear 
To  homage  wrung  from  selfish  fear, 
But  here,  amid  the  poor  and  blind, 
The  bound  and  suffering  of  our  kind, 
In  works  we  do,  in  prayers  we  pray, 
Life  of  our  life,  he  lives  to-day." 

Through  all  of  the  warp  and  woof  of  Whit- 
tier's  poetry  like  a  golden  thread  runs  the 
sublime  thought  of  the  "living  Christ,"  and 
nowhere  is  it  more  nobly  expressed  than  in 
the  ringing  measures  of  "Palestine": 

"Blest  land  of  Judaea!  thrice  hallowed  of  song, 
Where  the  holiest  of  memories  pilgrimlike  throng; 
In  the  shade  of  thy  palms,  by  the  shores  of  thy  sea, 
On  the  hills  of  thy  beauty,  my  heart  is  with  thee. 

"Blue  sea  of  the  hills!  hi  my  spirit  I  hear 
Thy  waters,  Gennesaret,  chime  on  my  ear; 
Where  the  Lowly  and  Just  with  the  people  sat  down, 
And  thy  spray  on  the  dust  of  his  sandals  was  thrown. 


60        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

"And  what  if  my  feet  may  not  tread  where  he  stood, 
Nor  my  ears  hear  the  dashing  of  Galilee's  flood, 
Nor  my  eyes  see  the  cross  which  he  bowed  him  to  bear, 
Nor  my  knees  press  Gethsemane's  garden  of  prayer. 

"Yet,  Loved  of  the  Father,  thy  Spirit  is  near 
To  the  meek,  and  the  lowly,  and  penitent  here; 
And  the  voice  of  thy  love  is  the  same  even  now 
As  at  Bethany's  tomb  or  on  Olivet's  brow." 

Theologically  Whittier  was  neither  a  radical 
nor  a  reactionary.  He  was  always  anxious  to 
conserve  the  precious  heritage  of  other  years, 
but  the  windows  of  his  soul  were  ever  open 
to  new  light  and  new  truth.  In  the  poetry  of 
the  gentle-spirited  son  of  a  sect  which  in 
earlier  days  the  men  of  blood  and  iron  of  the 
old  Puritan  theocracy  had  excoriated  and 
violently  persecuted,  we  find  no  spirit  of 
bitterness.  In  fact,  in  the  verse  of  Whittier 
we  find  a  tolerance  for  the  Ironside  Calvinist 
which  is  lacking  in  the  works  of  their  own 
descendants.  He  says, 

"Hold  fast  your  Puritan  heritage, 
But  let  the  free  thought  of  the  age 
Its  light  and  hope  and  sweetness  add 
To  the  stern  faith  the  fathers  had." 


And  again, 


"Praise  and  thanks  for  an  honest  man, 
Glory  to  God  for  the  Puritan!" 


THE  MESSAGE  OF  WHITTIER      61 

No  man  was  more  conscious  than  he  that 
the  Puritan,  with  all  of  his  uncompromising 
harshness  and  his  lack  of  sweetness  and  light, 
had  a  sense  of  the  eternal  values.  Whittier 
understood  this  because  he  too  endured  as  see 
ing  Him  who  is  invisible. 

"Over  the  roofs  of  the  pioneers 
Gathers  the  moss  of  a  hundred  years; 
On  man  and  his  works  has  passed  the  change 
Which  needs  must  be  in  a  century's  range; 
The  lands  lie  open  and  warm  in  the  sun, 
Anvils  clamor  and  millwheels  run — 
Flocks  on  the  hillsides,  herds  on  the  plain, 
The  wilderness  gladdened  with  fruit  and  grain! 

"Everywhere  is  the  grasping  hand, 
And  eager  adding  of  land  to  land; 
And  earth,  which  seemed  to  the  fathers  meant 
But  as  a  pilgrim's  wayside  tent — 
A  nightly  shelter  to  fold  away 
When  the  Lord  should  call  at  the  break  of  day — 
Solid  and  steadfast  seems  to  be, 
And  Time  has  forgotten  Eternity! 

"But  fresh  and  green  from  the  rotting  roots 
Of  primal  forests  the  young  growth  shoots; 
From  the  death  of  the  old  the  new  proceeds, 
And  the  life  of  truth  from  the  rot  of  creeds; 
On  the  ladder  of  God,  which  upward  leads, 
The  steps  of  progress  are  human  needs. 
For  his  judgments  still  are  a  mighty  deep, 
And  the  eyes  of  his  providence  never  sleep; 
When  the  night  is  darkest  he  gives  the  morn, 
When  the  famine  is  sorest  the  wine  and  corn!" 


62         JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

In  those  hours  when  we  stand  in  the  presence 
of  the  mighty  mysteries,  when  the  lamp  of 
faith  burns  low  and  the  specters  of  the  mind, 
like  Banquo's  gory  ghost,  refuse  to  down,  the 
simple  and  sincere  faith  of  the  New  England 
poet  is  a  veritable  rock  in  a  weary  land.  Whit- 
tier  reaches  his  affirmation  not  by  following 
the  steep  and  rugged  path  of  philosophical 
questioning  but,  rather,  by  merely  listening  to 
the  promptings  of  the  still  small  voice  within 
his  own  soul.  The  Quaker  creed  of  the  inner 
light  is  but  another  phrasing  of  John  Wesley's 
grand  old  doctrine  of  the  "witness  of  the 
Spirit."  But  Whittier  is  not  satisfied  simply 
to  believe  in  the  existence  of  God.  Not  only 
has  he  faith  in  a  God  but  in  a  good  God.  His 
Deity  is  not  the  Calvinistic  God  of  stern  justice 
and  merciless  wrath,  but  one  who  notes  the 
fall  of  every  sparrow  and  who,  "though  the 
road  be  dark  and  dreary,"  leads  his  children 

"O'er  moor  and  fen,  o'er  crag  and  torrent,  till 
The  night  is  gone." 

The  poem  "The  Eternal  Goodness"  more  nearly 
than  any  other  synthesizes  Whittier's  creed: 

"Yet,  in  the  maddening  maze  of  things, 

And  tossed  by  flood, 
To  one  fixed  trust  my  spirit  clings: 
I  know  that  God  is  good! 


THE  MESSAGE  OF  WHITTIER      63 

"The  wrong  that  pains  my  soul  below 

I  dare  not  throne  above, 
I  know  not  of  his  hate — I  know 
His  goodness  and  his  love. 

"I  know  not  what  the  future  hath 

Of  marvel  or  surprise, 
Assured  alone  that  life  and  death 
His  mercy  underlies. 

"And  so  beside  the  Silent  Sea 

I  wait  the  muffled  oar; 
No  harm  from  him  can  come  to  me 
On  ocean  or  on  shore. 

"I  know  not  where  his  islands  lift 

Their  fronded  palms  in  air; 
I  only  know  I  cannot  drift 
Beyond  his  love  and  care." 

But  Whittier  was  no  futile  nurse  of  pious 
emotions.  He  never  tried  to  substitute  feel 
ing  for  faith  or  faith  for  works.  He  under 
stood  that  emotion  not  translated  into  deeds  is 
baneful  and  that  faith  without  works  is  dead. 
The  man  who  sacrificed  his  best  years  to  bat 
tling  for  the  consummation  of  a  great  reform 
had  translated  his  theology  into  human  terms. 

"To  Thee  our  full  humanity, 

Its  joys  and  pains,  belong; 
The  wrong  of  man  to  man  on  thee 
Inflicts  a  deeper  wrong. 

"Who  hates,  hates  thee,  who  loves  becomes 
Therein  to  thee  allied." 


64         JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

His  love  for  his  fellow  man  was  not  a  mere 
wishy-washy  sentimentality.  With  Carlyle  he 
believed,  "When  thou  seest  ignorance,  ani- 
mality,  and  brute-mindedness,  smite  it  in 
God's  name."  Strong  and  steady  were  the 
blows  which  he  struck  the  institution  of  hu 
man  slavery.  Paradoxical  as  it  may  seem, 
the  Quaker  poet  was  the  most  militant  of  our 
American  writers.  There  are  times  when  his 
words  ring  as  the  trumpet  summoning  to  the 
fray. 

"...  in  God's  own  might 
We  gird  us  for  the  coining  fight, 
And  strong  in  him  whose  cause  is  ours 
In  conflict  with  unholy  powers, 
We  grasp  the  weapons  he  has  given — 
The  Light  and  Truth  and  Love  of  Heaven." 

Not  one  of  the  sturdy  virtues  of  the  Puri 
tan  was  lacking  in  the  Quaker,  but  in  him 
there  was  a  milder  strain.  He  had  a  deeper 
sense  of  brotherhood  and  a  broader  spirit  of 
tolerance.  His  religion  was  not  so  exclusively 
dominated  by  Old  Testament  ideals.  Love  as 
well  as  righteousness  was  in  his  lexicon,  yet 
he  was  ever  loyal  to  duty.  This  characteristic 
of  his  peculiar  people  is  with  translucent  clear 
ness  mirrored  forth  in  the  poetry  of  Whittier. 
In  the  cycle,  "The  Tent  on  the  Beach,"  one 
of  the  poems  tells  the  story  of  "Abraham 


THE  MESSAGE  OF  WHITTIER      65 

Davenport."  It  was  on  the  famous  dark 
day  in  May  in  1780.  The  sky  was  so  black 
with  ominous  clouds  that  the  birds  ceased  to 
sing,  the  barnyard  fowls  went  to  roost,  and 
the  cattle  lowed  at  the  pasture  bars  and  looked 
homeward.  All  expected  to  hear  the  doom- 
blast  of  the  trumpet  shatter  the  heavy  sky. 
In  the  old  State  House  sat  the  lawmakers  of 
Connecticut.  Some  one  said,  "It  is  the  Lord's 
great  day,"  and  moved  adjournment. 

". . .  and  then,  as  if  with  one  accord, 
All  eyes  were  turned  to  Abraham  Davenport. 
He  rose,  slow  cleaving  with  his  steady  voice 
The  intolerable  hush.     'This  well  may  be 
The  Day  of  Judgment  which  the  world  awaits; 
But  be  it  so  or  not,  I  only  know 
My  present  duty,  and  my  Lord's  command 
To  occupy  till  he  come.     So  at  the  post 
Where  he  hath  set  me  in  his  providence, 
I  choose,  for  one,  to  meet  him  face  to  face — 
No  faithless  servant  frightened  from  my  task, 
But  ready  when  the  Lord  of  the  harvest  calls; 
And  therefore,  with  all  reverence,  I  would  say, 
Let  God  do  his  work,  we  will  see  to  ours. 
Bring  in  the  candles.'    And  they  brought  them  in. 

"And  there  he  stands  in  memory  to  this  day, 
Erect,  self-poised,  a  rugged  face,  half  seen 
Against  the  background  of  unnatural  dark, 
A  witness  to  the  ages  as  they  pass, 
That  simple  duty  hath  no  place  for  fear." 


66        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

In  an  almost  forgotten  little  poem,  "The 
Friend's  Burial,"  we  find  a  precious  tribute  to 
the  memory  of  one  of  whom  it  could  be  said 
as  of  the  woman  who  broke  the  alabaster  box 
of  ointment  at  the  Master's  feet,  "She  hath 
done  what  she  could.'* 

"How  reverent  in  our  midst  she  stood, 

Or  knelt  in  grateful  praise! 
What  grace  of  Christian  womanhood 
Was  in  her  household  ways! 

"For  still  her  holy  living  meant 

No  duty  left  undone; 
The  heavenly  and  the  human  blent 
Their  kindred  loves  in  one. 

"The  dear  Lord's  best  interpreters 

Are  humble  human  souls; 
The  Gospel  of  a  life  like  hers 
Is  more  than  books  or  scrolls. 

"From  scheme  and  creed  the  light  goes  out, 

The  saintly  fact  survives; 
The  blessed  Master  none  can  doubt 
Revealed  in  holy  lives." 

"Philosophy,"  says  Novalis,  "bakes  no  bread, 
but  gives  us  God,  freedom,  and  immortality." 
The  real  poet  too  brings  to  the  soul  of  man 
a  more  vivid  consciousness  of  the  reality  of 
the  invisible.  In  Whittier  we  sound  not  the 
depth  of  struggling  souls,  we  find  no  burning 
desire  to 


THE  MESSAGE  OF  WHITTIER      67 

". .  .  assert  Eternal  Providence 
And  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  men," 

neither  do  we  view  as  in  a  magic  mirror  the 
varied  life  of  a  great  age.  But  we  do  come 
face  to  face  with  the  never-dying  truths 
which  the  "ripening  experience  of  life"  taught 
a  dauntless  and  loving  soul;  one  whose  sincere 
and  genuine  humanity  draws  him  humanly 
near  to  our  hearts.  To  sneer  at  Whittier  be 
cause  he  has  not  the  almost  all-inclusive  mes 
sage  of  a  Shakespeare  or  the  superabundant 
vigor  of  a  Browning  is  to  give  a  pitiable  exam 
ple  of  that  sophomoric  sciolism  which  believes 
that  those  ideas  that  are  easily  comprehensible 
are  invariably  superficial.  Obscurity  and  pro 
fundity  are  not  necessarily  synonymous  terms; 
neither  is  simplicity  an  incontrovertible  evi 
dence  of  shallowness.  Whittier's  poetic  assur 
ances  of  immortality  are  of  infinitely  more 
worth  than  many  labored  volumes. 

His  thoughts  here  are  those  of  a  man  who 
over  doubt  has  gloriously  triumphed.  "My 
Psalm"  is  a  poem  which  expresses  the  un 
wavering  faith  of  life's  eventide: 

"I  mourn  no  more  my  vanished  years: 

Beneath  a  tender  rain, 
An  April  rain  of  smiles  and  tears, 
My  heart  is  young  again. 


68         JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

"Enough  that  blessings  undeserved 
Have  marked  my  erring  track; 
That  wheresoe'er  my  feet  have  swerved, 
His  chastening  turned  me  back; 

"That  more  and  more  a  Providence 

Of  love  is  understood, 
Making  the  springs  of  time  and  sense 
Sweet  with  eternal  good; 

"That  death  seems  but  a  covered  way 

Which  opens  into  light, 
Wherein  no  blinded  child  can  stray 
Beyond  the  Father's  sight; 

"And  so  the  shadows  fall  apart, 
And  so  the  west- winds  play; 
And  all  the  windows  of  my  heart 
I  open  to  the  day." 

But  the  poem  of  Whittier  which  is  nearer 
and  dearer  to  our  hearts  than  any  other  is 
"Snowbound."  Its  Flemish  pictures  of  old 
days  can  never  fade  from  memory's  wall. 
Without  the  icy  breath  of  winter  blows  o'er 
the  land  while  around  the  great  fireplace  sits 
the  household  in  tumultuous  privacy  of  storm 

and 

". . .  the  old,  rude-furnished  room 
Burst  flower-like  into  rosy  bloom," 

a  bloom  which  will  ever  glow  upon  the  pages 
of  our  American  literature.  In  how  many  and 
many  a  life  does  "Snowbound"  strike  an  an- 


THE  MESSAGE  OF  WHITTIER      69 

swering  chord!  As  the  poet's  words  ring  in 
our  hearts,  fond  memory  throws  the  light  of 
other  days  around  us.  We  sit  again  by  hearth- 
fires  that  have  long  grown  cold  and  dream  of 
those  whom  here  we  see  no  more  and  long 

".  .  .  for  the  touch  of  a  vanished  hand 
And  the  sound  of  a  voice  that  is  still." 

Like  Tennyson's  "In  Memoriam,"  "Snow 
bound"  is  a  cluster  of  blossoms  from  the 
valley  and  the  shadowof  death.  It  was  written 
at  an  hour  of  loneliness  and  darkness  and  at 
least  one  of  its  stanzas  came  from  an  aching 
heart.  Of  his  sister  he  writes  thus: 

"As  one  who  held  herself  a  part 
Of  all  she  saw,  and  let  her  heart 

Against  the  household  bosom  lean, 
Upon  the  motly-braided  mat 
Our  youngest  and  our  dearest  sat, 
Lifting  her  large,  sweet,  asking  eyes, 

Now  bathed  in  the  unfading  green 
And  holy  peace  of  Paradise. 
Oh,  looking  from  some  heavenly  hill, 

Or  from  the  shade  of  saintly  palms, 

Or  silver  reach  of  river  calms, 
Do  those  large  eyes  behold  me  still? 
With  me  one  little  year  ago : 
The  chill  weight  of  the  whiter  snow 

For  months  upon  her  grave  has  lain; 


(TO        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

The  birds  are  glad;  the  brier-rose  fills 

The  air  with  sweetness;  all  the  hills 

Stretch  green  to  June's  unclouded  sky; 

But  still  I  wait  with  ear  and  eye 

For  something  gone  which  should  be  nigh, 

A  loss  in  all  familiar  things, 

In  flower  that  blooms,  and  bird  that  sings. 

And  yet,  dear  heart!  remembering  thee, 

Am  I  not  richer  than  of  old? 
Safe  in  thy  immortality, 

What  change  can  reach  the  wealth  I  hold? 

What  chance  can  mar  the  pearl  and  gold 
Thy  love  hath  left  in  trust  with  me? 
And  while  in  Life's  late  afternoon, 

Where  cool  and  long  the  shadows  grow, 
I  walk  to  meet  the  night  that  soon 

Shall  shape  and  shadow  overflow, 
I  cannot  feel  that  thou  art  far, 
Since  near  at  need  the  angels  are; 
And  when  the  sunset  gates  unbar, 

Shall  I  not  see  thee  waiting  stand, 
And,  white  against  the  evening  star, 

The  welcome  of  thy  beckoning  hand?" 

But  another  stanza  of  "Snowbound"  marks  the 
high-tide  of  Whittier's  poetry: 

"What  matter  how  the  night  behaved? 
What  matter  how  the  north- wind  raved? 
Blow  high,  blow  low,  not  all  its  snow 
Could  quench  our  hearth-fire's  ruddy  glow. 
O  Time  and  Change!  with  hah-  as  gray 
As  was  my  sire's  that  winter  day, 
How  strange  it  seems,  with  so  much  gone 
Of  life  and  love,  to  still  live  on! 


THE  MESSAGE  OF  WHITTIER      71 

Ah,  brother!  only  I  and  thou 
Are  left  of  all  that  circle  now — 
The  dear  home  faces  whereupon 
That  fitful  firelight  paled  and  shone. 
Henceforward,  listen  as  we  will, 
The  voices  of  that  hearth  are  still; 
Look  where  we  may,  the  wide  earth  o'er, 
Those  lighted  faces  smile  no  more. 
We  tread  the  paths  their  feet  have  worn, 

We  sit  beneath  their  orchard  trees, 

We  hear  like  them  the  hum  of  bees 
And  rustle  of  the  bladed  corn; 
We  turn  the  pages  that  they  read, 

Their  written  words  we  linger  o'er, 
But  in  the  sun  they  cast  no  shade, 
No  voice  is  heard,  no  sign  is  made, 

No  step  is  on  the  conscious  floor! 
Yet  Love  will  dream,  and  Faith  will  trust 
(Since  He  who  knows  our  need  is  just), 
That  somehow,  somewhere,  meet  we  must. 
Alas  for  him  who  never  sees 
The  stars  shine  through  his  cypress-trees! 
Who,  hopeless,  lays  his  dead  away, 
Nor  looks  to  see  the  breaking  day 
Across  the  mournful  marbles  play! 
Who  hath  not  learned,  in  hours  of  faith, 

The  truth  to  flesh  and  sense  unknown, 
That  Life  is  ever  lord  of  Death, 

And  Love  can  never  lose  its  own!" 

Words  like  these  the  world  will  not  willingly 
let  die. 

Whittier's  deep  and  tranquil  spirituality  not 
only  finds  expression  in  his  distinctively  re- 


72         JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

ligious  poetry,  but  it  passes  beyond  this  and 
pervades  more  or  less  fully  the  whole  body 
of  his  work.  In  it  there  is  no  Calvinistic  gloom 
and  severity  but  peace,  light,  love,  and  child 
like  trust.  In  the  religious  poetry  of  the  New 
England  Quaker  we  find  a  mingling  of  Puritan 
and  Friend,  of  Justice  and  Love,  of  the  stern 
creed  of  the  dauntless  Genevan  and  the  simple 
faith  of  leather-clad  George  Fox.  It  was 
John  Robinson,  the  pastor  in  Leyden  of  the 
men  and  women  of  the  Mayflower,  who  uttered 
the  pregnant  sentence,  "There  is  more  light 
and  more  truth  in  God's  blessed  Word  than 
has  yet  been  revealed."  The  great  gulf  that 
is  fixed  between  the  dogmatic  horrors  of  Michael 
Wigglesworth's  "Day  of  Doom,"  the  typical 
poem  of  the  old  New  England,  and  the  win 
some  inclusiveness  of  the  simple  creed  of  the 
Quaker  poet  demonstrates  the  significant  fact 
that  for  two  centuries  of  American  life  the 
thoughts  of  man  had  been  widening  with  the 
process  of  the  suns.  The  bells  from  a  thousand 
steeples  had  rung  out  the  darkness  of  the 
dismal  days  of  The  Scarlet  Letter  and  the 
Salem  witchcraft.  In  the  poetry  of  Whittier 
we  live  in  the  brighter  light  of  a  nobler  day. 
And  as  we  walk  over  the  mountains  and 
through  the  valleys  of  life  we  can  stand  more 
firmly  and  fight  better  because  our  souls  have 


THE  MESSAGE  OF  WHITTIER      73 

been  refreshed  as  we  tarried  with  this  sweet- 
voiced,  clean-souled  poet  by  the  fountains  of 
life  abundant. 

Although  there  are  still  among  us  those  who 
remember  the  poets  of  the  New  England 
renaissance  as  they  came  and  went  among 
their  fellows,  it  was  more  than  a  quarter  of  a 
century  ago  that  the  last  of  that  shining  com 
pany  passed  to  where  beyond  these  voices  there  is 
peace.  Emerson,  the  serene  earthquake  scholar 
of  Concord,  and  Longfellow,  the  gentle  singer 
of  our  national  springtime,  died  in  the  early 
eighties.  Lowell,  the  youngest  of  the  group, 
born  over  a  century  ago,  February  22,  1819, 
died  in  the  old  elm-shaded  home  of  his  boy 
hood  in  1891.  A  year  later  ended  the  tranquil 
life  of  the  militant,  serene  hermit  of  Ames- 
bury.  In  1894  the  lambent  soul  of  the  genial 
old  autocrat,  "the  last  leaf  on  the  tree,"  felt 
the  gentle  touch  of  the  breath  of  an  eternal 
morning.  To-day  our  souls  thrill  with  the 
mighty  impulses  of  a  tremendous  age.  New 
voices  are  in  the  air  and  eyes  that  once  were 
holden  are  seeing  new  visions.  But  not  all 
that  has  come  to  us  from  other  generations 
should  be  allowed  to  gather  mold  among  the 
forgotten  archives  of  the  past.  The  writer 
who  deals  with  the  fundamentals  of  life  and 
of  character  has  eternal  youth.  From  the 


74        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

quiet  cottage  at  Amesbury  have  come  lines 
heard  around  the  world.  Generations  yet  un 
born  will  through  the  words  of  John  Green- 
leaf  Whittier  learn  the  truths  of  God.  Though 
dead  he  yet  speaketh. 

"There  is  no  end  for  souls  like  his; 
No  night  for  children  of  the  day." 


V 
THE  ART  OF  BEING  HUMAN 

ONCE  when  Father  Taylor  was  lying  upon 
what  was  supposed  to  be  his  deathbed,  some 
one  said,  "Well,  Father,  you'll  soon  be  with 
the  angels."  Quick  as  a  flash  the  old  preacher 
replied:  "I  don't  want  angels.  I  want  folks." 
After  all,  human  sympathy  is  the  quality 
which  more  than  any  other  draws  us  to  its 
possessor.  We  cannot  help  liking  the  person 
who  has  it.  In  some  parts  of  the  United  States 
there  is  a  provincialism  which  expresses  an 
idea  for  which  orthodox  terminology  is  lacking. 
It  is  customary  to  speak  commendatorily  of  a 
person  as  common.  This  is  almost  another 
word  for  human.  Happy  is  he  who  meets  the 
"common"  man  or  woman.  He  whose  expe 
riences  have  given  him  human  sympathy  has 
that  which  is  worth  more  to  the  world  than 
the  most  minute  and  abstruse  knowledge 
gathered  in  classroom  and  libraries. 

Dean  Shaler  once  said,  "I  have  known  many 
an  ignorant  sailor  or  backwoodsman  who,  be 
cause  he  has  been  brought  into  sympathetic 
contact  with  the  primitive  qualities  of  his 

75 


76         JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

kind,  was  humanely  a  better  educated  man 
than  those  who  pride  themselves  on  their 
culture."  The  French  have  a  proverb,  which 
being  translated  says,  "Born  a  man  and  died 
a  grocer."  With  slight  emendations  this 
epigram  can  be  adapted  to  dehumanized  indi 
viduals  in  various  fields  of  activity:  "Born  a 
man,  and  died  a  broker."  Or  it  may  be  "and 
died  a  preacher"  or  "a  college  professor." 
The  Germanization  of  the  American  university 
during  the  decades  following  the  Franco- 
Prussian  war  has  tended  to  produce  the  narrow 
specialist  and  the  seed-pecking  critic.  Limi 
tation  of  interests  tends  to  shrivel  the  soul. 
The  story  is  told  of  a  lady  who  met  at  a  dinner 
a  well-dressed,  attractive  man  with  whom  she 
unsuccessfully  tried  to  carry  on  a  conversa 
tion.  Among  the  subjects  which  she  intro 
duced  were  politics,  literature,  music,  and  even 
people,  but  she  could  get  not  a  gleam  of  re 
sponse.  Finally,  with  consummate  social  tact 
the  gentleman  himself  came  to  her  rescue  by 
saying,  "I  can't  talk  about  these  things.  My 
line  is  lumber."  A  man's  life  is  just  about  as 
large  as  the  range  of  his  interests.  Nothing 
will  take  the  place  of  the  vital  touch  with 
things  human.  William  James  was  able  to 
make  psychology  thrill  with  life  because  he 
himself  was  vitally  human.  Professor  Louns- 


THE  ART  OF  BEING  HUMAN       77 

bury  made  the  ordinarily  sleep-producing  sub 
ject  of  philology  glow  with  genuine  interest 
because  he  personally  was  in  touch  with  the 
real  things  of  earth. 

For  over  a  quarter  of  a  century  William 
Dean  Howells  was  the  unchallenged  dean  of 
American  letters.  Seventy-odd  volumes  came 
from  his  tireless  pen.  Not  one  of  them  is  the 
product  of  any  fantastic  feat  of  the  imagina 
tion.  He  simply  chronicled  the  life  which  he 
sympathetically  observed.  From  the  banks  of 
the  Ohio  to  romance-haloed  Venice  was  a  long 
journey.  But  to  this  kindly,  tolerant,  brotherly 
lover  of  books  and  men,  life  was  always  life. 
To  read  the  memory-gilded  pages  upon  which 
he  has  written  of  a  Boy's  Town,  along  the  great 
river  whose  changing  and  haunting  beauty 
has  not  been  lost  although  it  no  longer  flows 
through  a  pathless  wilderness  as  it  did  in  the 
days  when  the  birch  bark  canoe  of  the  red 
man  ruffled  its  gleaming  waters,  is  vicariously 
to  live  the  life  of  truth-loving,  warm-hearted 
men  and  women  of  the  days  that  are  no  more. 
As  in  the  Years  of  My  Youth  we  come  into 
contact  with  the  ideas  and  ideals  of  a  later 
boyhood  home  not  far  from  the  sea-green 
waves  of  Lake  Erie  we  feel  the  thrill  of  the 
westward  march  of  the  Puritan  spirit.  The 
man  who  depicted  the  subtle  charm  of  Brahman 


78        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

New  England,  the  hypnotic  fascination  of  the 
seething  whirl  of  our  American  Babylons,  the 
inimitable  charm  of  England's  gray-stone  ab 
beys  and  ivy-clad  towers,  found  no  dull  pages 
in  the  world's  varied  volume.  In  the  follow 
ing  sentence  Howells  epitomizes  the  source  of 
his  own  attractive  power:  "The  way  to  be 
universally  interesting  is  to  be  universally 
interested." 

The  world  to-day  is  every  whit  as  interest 
ing  as  it  was  when  Chaucer's  pilgrims  journeyed 
from  the  Tabard  Inn  in  Southwark  to  Canter 
bury.  "Books,"  says  Stevenson,  "are  a  mighty 
bloodless  substitute  for  life."  We  read  so  that 
we  can  better  understand  the  real  world  which 
is  mirrored  forth  in  the  world  of  letters.  With 
out  attempting  to  add  to  the  high  plethora  of 
definitions  of  education,  it  can  be  truly  said 
that  education  means  the  broadening  of  an 
individual's  experience.  President  Thwing  tells 
us  that  most  college  men  who  fail  in  life  do  so 
because  of  an  inability  to  get  along  with 
people.  A  man  can  succeed  in  no  public  ca 
pacity  unless  he  understands  humanity.  He 
cannot  do  this  unless  he  has  previously  known 
intimately  and  appreciatively  dozens,  possibly 
hundreds,  of  people  in  both  literature  and  life. 

The  late  Dr.  William  T.  Harris,  for  many 
years  commissioner  of  education,  once  spoke  of 


THE  ART  OF  BEING  HUMAN       79 

literature  as  "vicarious  experience."  What  a 
world  of  suggestion  in  the  phrase!  The  man 
whose  knowledge  of  life  depends  upon  his  own 
personal  experience  is  almost  certain  to  be 
"cabined,  cribbed,  confined"  in  his  outlook 
upon  the  world's  thought  and  activities.  Real 
literature  is  not  something  to  give  to  "airy 
nothing  a  local  habitation  and  a  name." 
Writing  that  is  not  irradiated  with  life  is 
sounding  brass  and  tinkling  cymbal.  Shake 
speare  looms  great  among  the  children  of 
genius  because  his  range  of  human  sympathy 
was  larger  than  that  of  any  other  man  who 
has  recorded  the  thoughts  of  his  heart  upon 
the  printed  page.  George  Eliot  has  written 
volumes  characterized  by  an  encyclopedic  learn 
ing,  but  the  books  which  for  generations  to 
come  will  keep  her  memory  green  are  those 
which  tell  of  the  men  and  women  whom  she 
learned  to  know  and  love  in  her  girlhood  among 
the  hedgerows  of  Warwickshire.  The  best  of 
Emerson  comes  not  from  his  "transcendental 
moonshine,"  but  from  his  power  to  see  below 
the  surface  in  the  lives  of  flesh  and  blood  men 
and  women.  Being  quoted  a  million  times 
will  not  make  threadbare  Pope's  truth,  "The 
proper  study  of  mankind  is  man." 

To   value  books  more  than  people  means 
arrant  pedantry.     To  treat  persons  as  though 


80         JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

they  are  things  is  a  cardinal  sin  against  so 
ciety.  Broadmindedness,  some  widely  -  pro 
claimed  opinions  to  the  contrary  notwithstand 
ing,  does  not  necessarily  mean  laxity  of  ethics. 
Neither  is  the  person  with  definite  ideas  in 
regard  to  right  and  wrong  invariably  narrow 
in  his  outlook.  The  broad  man  is  one  of  broad 
sympathies  and  wide  affinities.  His  most  dis 
tinguishing  characteristic  is  the  power  to  put 
himself  in  another  person's  place.  He  can 
disagree  with  his  neighbor  and  at  the  same 
time  respect  him  and  his  point  of  view.  The 
old  deacon  who  said,  "If  I  am  wrong,  I  am 
willing  to  be  convinced,  but  I'd  like  to  see 
the  man  who  could  do  it,"  merely  furnished 
a  most  delightful  illustration  of  the  intoler 
ance  of  crass  stupidity.  The  really  humanized 
son  of  Adam  does  not  want  to  make  the  world 
over  after  his  own  pattern. 

The  surest  way  for  an  individual  to  de 
personalize  himself  is  to  make  his  life  a  namby- 
pamby  imitation  of  the  career  of  some  one 
else.  Emerson  says  in  his  essay  on  "Self- 
Reliance,"  "We  come  to  wear  one  cut  of  face 
and  figure  and  acquire  by  degrees  the  gentlest 
asinine  expression."  The  man  who  goes  with 
the  crowd  will  never  be  anything  but  one 
of  them.  A  subservient  follower  never  makes  a 
leader.  He  who  is  too  cowardly  to  live  his 


THE  ART  OF  BEING  HUMAN      81 

own  life  annihilates  his  personality.  Insipidity 
is  the  reward  of  the  imitator.  No  one  can  do 
our  living  for  us.  We  must  make  our  own 
decisions  and  abide  by  their  consequences. 
No  decision  in  the  last  analysis  is  a  wrong 
decision.  In  regard  to  the  larger  issues  of  life 
it  is  impossible  to  long  halt  between  two 
opinions.  "He  that  is  not  for  me  is  against 
me."  To  live  a  life  of  half-hearted  negative- 
ness  or  of  cowardly  compromise  means  the 
subtle  but  certain  deterioration  of  the  very 
foundations  of  the  soul.  Weakness  breeds 
weakness:  strength  begets  strength.  Power  of 
decision  means  ruggedness  of  personality. 

Snobbishness  is  another  impeder  of  the 
development  of  a  sincere,  attractive  personal 
ity.  In  the  Standard  Dictionary  we  read  the 
following:  "Snob — a  vulgar  pretender  to  gen 
tility  or  superior  position;  one  who  regards 
wealth  and  position  rather  than  character.'* 
In  other  words,  a  snob  is  one  who  cares  more 
for  appearance  than  reality;  one  who  sub 
stitutes  false  standards  for  those  that  are 
true.  For  him  life  is  not  real;  it  is  merely  a 
spectacle.  His  world  is  a  stage  upon  which 
he  can  "strut  and  fret."  He  does  not  enjoy 
good  society  but  takes  pleasure  in  being  seen 
in  it.  It  was  said  of  a  certain  ecclesiastical 
politician  in  England  that  he  was  "a  dexterous 


82        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

worshiper  of  the  rising  sun."  In  his  lexicon  a 
friend  was  one  who  could  advance  his  interests. 
But,  after  all,  the  world  is  so  constructed  that 
it  pays  a  man  to  be  his  real  self  and  to  judge 
other  human  beings  by  the  genuine  standards 
of  worth. 

A  number  of  years  ago  an  American  politician 
won  considerable  notoriety  by  coining  the 
proverb,  "A  cheap  coat  makes  a  cheap  man." 
Was  there  ever  more  falsity  compressed  into 
seven  words?  Many  a  man  worth  his  weight 
in  gold  has  worn  a  cheap  coat.  Abraham 
Lincoln  with  his  homemade  shirt  and  "jeans" 
trousers,  upheld  by  one  "yarn  gallus"  and 
terminating  somewhere  between  the  knees  and 
the  ankles  was  not  a  "cheap  man."  In  real 
worth  of  manhood  there  was  enough  of  him 
to  outweigh  at  least  a  thousand  of  the  per 
fumed  poodles  of  the  gold  coast.  A  number  of 
years  ago  I  noticed  a  great  crowd  standing 
in  the  corridor  of  a  metropolitan  railroad  sta 
tion.  Upon  inquiring  the  cause  of  the  gather 
ing  I  discovered  that  a  certain  widely  adver 
tised  wife-hunting,  fortune-seeking  duke  would 
pass  that  way  in  a  few  minutes.  Soon  the 
eager,  anxious  throng  was  rewarded  by  the 
sight  of  the  son  of  a  line  of  British  earls,  a 
bandy-legged  weakling  with  receding  forehead 
and  evil,  dissipated  face.  But  his  title  won 


THE  ART  OF  BEING  HUMAN       83 

for  him  an  American  wife  and  an  American 
fortune.  It  is  a  tragically  false  measure  of 
judgment  which  would  make  us  bow  before 
a  title  or  wealth  possessed  by  one  with  nothing 
else  to  commend  him. 

Equally  obnoxious  is  the  intellectual  snob. 
Now  and  then  we  meet  a  man  who  goes  through 
life  with  the  assumption  that  because  his  name 
is  on  the  alumni  roll  of  some  great  institution 
he  is  among  the  chosen  ones  of  earth,  inde 
pendent  of  his  knowledge,  his  efficiency,  his 
personality,  or  his  character.  If  any  of  us 
acquire  the  habit  of  looking  upon  the  educa 
tion  which  we  have  been  given  at  the  ex 
pense  of  society  as  a  possession  which  gives  us 
the  right  to  look  with  sneering  contempt  upon 
our  fellow  men,  we  become  what  Roosevelt 
called  "undesirable  citizens."  "No  man  ever 
had  a  point  of  pride  that  was  not  injurious 
to  him."  To  use  a  wrong  criterion  in  judging 
either  others  or  ourselves  tends  to  corrode  our 
lives  and  our  souls  with  falseness. 

It  is,  nevertheless,  possible  to  be  entirely 
sincere  and  unselfish  without  being  human. 
In  Wordsworth's  little  poem  "She  Was  a 
Phantom  of  Delight"  one  of  the  finest  tributes 
paid  to  his  wife  is  in  the  line,  "A  creature  not 
too  bright  or  good  for  human  nature's  daily 
food."  An  outstanding  fault  in  Tennyson's 


84         JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

"Idylls  of  the  King"  is  his  portrait  of  King 
Arthur  as  a  monstrosity  of  icy  perfection. 
Ice  water  in  the  veins  is  a  poor  substitute  for 
red  blood.  There  are  unfortunately  attractive 
sinners  and  sour  saints.  A  human  iceberg  is 
always  a  poor  sort  of  a  Christian.  Oftentimes 
a  thin-lipped,  critical,  unsympathetic  church 
man  makes  religion  repulsive  to  an  entire 
community.  Jesus  did  not  glorify  the  narrow, 
repressed,  circumscribed  life;  he  preached  the 
gospel  of  the  life  abundant.  Long-facedness  is 
not  a  sign  of  spirituality.  In  the  words  of 
Carlyle:  "The  man  who  cannot  laugh  is  not 
only  fit  for  treasons,  stratagems,  and  spoils, 
but  his  whole  life  is  already  a  treason  and  a 
stratagem."  The  lack  of  a  sense  of  humor 
means  the  lack  of  imagination,  and  hard  in 
deed  is  it  for  him  afflicted  in  this  way  to  have 
a  sympathetic  understanding  of  life  and  of 
humanity.  But  life  itself  is  the  greatest  of 
all  teachers.  We  educate  each  other.  The 
better  we  know  our  fellow  men  the  more  toler 
ant  we  become.  The  years  teach  us  that  man 
is  not  black  spotted  white,  but  white  spotted 
black.  Experience  is  the  real  humanizer. 

It  is  said  that  at  a  certain  stage  in  the 
initiation  of  the  Buddhist  priest  the  postulant 
reaches  a  certain  door  and  before  he  can  pro 
ceed  farther  he  is  asked  the  question,  "Art 


THE  ART  OF  BEING  HUMAN      85 

thou  a  man?"  "Art  thou  human?"  is  not  an  in 
appropriate  interrogation  with  which  to  greet 
a  young  man  standing  at  the  portals  of  those 
professions  which  have  to  do  not  with  things 
but  with  people.  "What  you  are  speaks  so 
loudly  that  I  cannot  hear  what  you  say." 
In  the  long  run,  success  or  failure  depends 
upon  what  we  make  of  ourselves.  The  elusive 
factor  called  personality  is  the  most  potent 
force  beneath  the  shining  stars.  Man  is  his 
own  ancestor.  Edwin  M.  Stanton  is  quoted 
as  saying:  "Every  man  over  fifty  is  respon 
sible  for  his  face."  More  than  this  we  are  the 
molders  of  our  characters,  the  makers  of  our 
personalities.  Arnold  of  Rugby  was  bigger 
than  anything  he  did.  In  the  biography  of 
Mark  Twain  we  find  a  man  greater  than  the 
books  which  came  from  his  pen.  Andrew 
Carnegie  was  more  than  his  millions.  Roose 
velt  the  man  looms  larger  than  Roosevelt  the 
statesman.  Thomas  Carlyle  as  a  Scotch 
farmer  would  have  been  a  man  of  mark  in 
his  little  world.  There  can  easily  be  too  many 
bloodless  automatons  of  efficiency  or  deperson 
alized  bundles  of  erudition,  but  never  too  many 
red-blooded,  true-hearted,  life-loving  friends  and 
helpers  of  mankind. 


VI 
THE  WHITE  WATER  LILY 

IN  Theodore  Storm's  modest  little  classic 
Immensee,  a  book  which  epitomizes  the  tragedy 
of  a  vanished  hope,  the  young  man  walks  in 
the  pale  calm  moonlight  by  the  shores  of  a 
tranquil  inland  sea.  Before  his  eyes  fair  pic 
tures  come  and  go.  He  sees 

"Such  sights  as  youthful  poets  dream 
On  summer  eve  by  haunted  stream." 

Far  out  upon  the  crystal  surface  of  the  fair 
and  placid  lake  like  a  fallen  star  there  gleams 
a  solitary  water  lily,  white  as  the  clouds  that 
float  beneath  the  blue  sky  of  a  summer's  day. 
An  indescribable  longing  to  possess  the  lonely 
flower  seizes  the  young  man's  heart.  Soon 
the  sturdy  strokes  of  the  swimmer  break  the 
stillness  of  the  silent  night.  He  swims  and 
swims,  but  still  the  lily  is  far,  far  in  the  dim 
distance.  At  last  he  turns  his  face  shoreward 
and  never  once  does  he  look  back  upon  the 
fragrant  bloom  which  he  had  so  ardently  longed 
to  make  his  own.  To  this  young  man  the 
white  flower  symbolized  one  whom  he  had 

86 


THE  WHITE  WATER  LILY         87 

loved  and  lost  in  the  days  when  his  sky  was 
gilded  with  the  auroral  light  of  youthful  ro 
mance  and  his  heart  sang  the  dulcet  strains 
of  love's  old  sweet  song.  But  to  strive  for  the 
unattainable  is  the  common  lot  of  man. 

We  all  live  in  two  worlds.  We  know  full 
well  this  practical,  everyday  world,  this  world 
of  getting  and  spending,  where  the  fittest 
survive  and  the  weak  go  down  in  the  fight, 
where  the  blight  of  sin  and  ignorance  causes 
the  fairest  flowers  of  life  to  fade  and  wither. 
It  is  this  realm  of  which  Shelley  sings  in  words 
of  real  pathos: 

"We  look  before  and  after, 

And  pine  for  what  is  not; 
Our  sincerest  laughter 

With  some  pain  is  fraught. 
Our  sweetest  songs  are  those 

That  tell  of  saddest  thought." 

But  we  live,  too,  in  another  world:  in  the 
world  of  dreams:  in  the  heaven-illumined  land 
of  the  ideal.  Here  we  forget  the  harsher 
realities  of  life  and  catch  faint  adumbrations  of 
the  golden  days  which  are  yet  to  be.  Here 
there 

". . .  falls  not  hail  or  rain  or  any  snow, 
Nor  ever  wind  blows  loudly;  but  it  lies 
Deep-meadowed,  happy,  fair,  with  orchard  lawns 
And  bowery  hollows  crowned  with  summer  sea." 


88         JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

For  many  of  us  the  land  ideal  looms  up 
against  the  misty  backgrounds  of  the  past. 
There  is  that  within  man  which  makes  him 
idealize  bygone  days.  The  remembrance  of 
them  brings  to  the  heart  that 

". . .  feeling  of  sadness  and  longing 
That  is  not  akin  to  pain, 

And  resembles  sorrow  only 
As  the  mist  resembles  the  ram." 

It  is  this  feeling  of  sadness  which  the  deep- 
voiced  Tennyson  describes  in  words  of  never- 
dying  melody: 

"Tears,  idle  tears,  I  know  not  what  they  mean. 
Tears  from  the  depth  of  some  divine  despair 
Rise  in  the  heart,  and  gather  to  the  eyes, 
In  looking  on  the  happy  autumn  fields, 
And  thinking  of  the  days  that  are  no  more." 

We  stand  upon  the  summit  of  the  mountain 
and  view  the  road  by  which  we  have  ascended 
as  it  winds  through  the  valley  and  over  the 
foothills  and  our  souls  are  thrilled  by  its 
beauty.  We  see  it  curve  through  sylvan  dells, 
through  fertile  farms,  through  the  tree-em 
bowered  village.  We  forget  the  long  and 
toilsome  journey,  the  blazing  sun  of  the  noon 
day,  the  summer  storms  that  blew  from  the 
mountains.  Across  the  emerald-clad  sward  of 


THE  WHITE  WATER  LILY         89 

the  years,  like  the  sound  of  sweet  bells  in  tune, 
come  the  words  of  New  England's  crystal- 
toned  bard: 

"I  can  see  the  breezy  dome  of  groves, 

The  shadows  of  Deering's  Woods 
And  the  friendships  old  and  the  early  loves 
Come  back  with  a  Sabbath  sound,  as  of  doves 

In  quiet  neighborhoods. 
And  the  verse  of  that  sweet  old  song, 
It  flutters  and  murmurs  still: 
'A  boy's  will  is  the  wind's  will, 
And  the  thoughts  of  youth  are  long,  long  thoughts.' 

"I  remember  the  gleams  and  the  glooms  that  dart 
Across  the  schoolboy's  brain; 
The  song  and  the  silence  in  the  heart, 
That  in  part  are  prophecies  and  in  part 
Are  longings  wild  and  vain. 
And  the  voice  of  that  fitful  song 
Sings  on,  and  is  never  still: 
'A  boy's  will  is  the  wind's  will, 
And  the  thoughts  of  youth  are  long,  long  thoughts.' 

"Strange  to  me  now  are  the  forms  I  meet 

When  I  visit  the  dear  old  town, 

But  the  native  air  is  pure  and  sweet, 

And  the  trees  that  o'ershadow  each  well-known  street, 

As  they  balance  up  and  down, 

Are  singing  the  beautiful  song, 

Are  sighing  and  whispering  still: 

'A  boy's  will  is  the  wind's  will, 
£  And  the  thoughts  of  youth  are  long,  long  thoughts.'  " 


90         JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

When  fond  memory  throws  the  light  of  other 
days  around  us  we  live  amid  the  Arcadian 
beauty  of  the  land  ideal. 

But  life's  golden  age  is  never  in  the  past. 
Dreams  of  a  brighter  future  make  it  easier 
for  men  to  bear  the  burdens  of  a  darkened 
present.  The  lank,  ungainly  backwoods  boy, 
who  lay  before  the  open  in  a  rude  Illinois 
cabin  reading  over  and  over  Mason  Weems's 
quaint  old  Life  of  Washington,  forgot  the  pov 
erty  and  crudeness  of  his  surroundings  as  he 
looked  across  the  future's  untrodden  fields  to 
the  day  when  on  his  shoulders  would  rest  the 
mantle  of  the  Cincinnatus  of  the  West.  The 
boy  who  trod  the  towpaths  of  the  Western 
Reserve  dreamed  of  the  thousands  whom  he 
should  some  day  sway  by  the  power  of  his 
eloquence. 

On  a  rocky  New  England  farm,  so  lonely 
that  even  now  ever  and  anon  the  white-footed 
deer  forsakes  his  leafy  covert  and  drinks  from 
the  streamlet  in  the  meadow,  there  lived  and 
toiled  a  dark-eyed  Quaker  lad.  How  hard 
was  his  lot!  How  narrow  his  life!  But  Green- 
leaf  Whittier  had  seen  the  vision.  The  plow- 
boy  of  the  Merrimac  valley  had  heard  the  lute- 
like  voice  of  the  plowman  of  the  bonnie  fields 
of  Ayr.  The  light  that  never  was  on  land  or 
sea  shone  over  that  barren  little  farm  and  the 


THE  WHITE  WATER    LILY         91 

world  is  richer  to-day  because  that  Quaker 
lad  followed  the  gleam. 

Long  ago,  when  the  spacious  times  of  the 
great  Elizabeth  were  fading  in  sweeping  clouds 
of  glory  from  the  earth,  the  youthful  John 
Milton  set  before  himself  the  sublime  ideal 
of  writing  a  poem  which  the  world  would  not 
willingly  let  die.  Even  then  did  he  realize 
that  he  who  would  write  an  heroic  poem  must 
first  live  an  heroic  life.  He  passed  through 
the  fiery  furnace  of  young  manhood  without 
the  smell  of  smoke  upon  his  garments.  Year 
after  year  he  burned  the  scholar's  lamp  of 
toil  and  sacrifice.  When  the  clouds  of  fratricidal 
war  hung  like  a  pall  over  the  land  he  doffed 
his  singer's  mantle  blue  and  donned  the  armor 
of  an  intellectual  gladiator.  In  the  battle  for 
the  liberty  of  the  English  people  the  quiet 
scholar  stood  in  the  foremost  ranks.  Sorrow 
walked  with  him.  The  day  came  when  the 
blind  bard  sat  in  ever-enduring  darkness  and 
saw  no  more 

"The  sweet  approach  of  even  or  morn, 
Or  sight  of  vernal  bloom  or  summer's  rose, 
Or  flocks,  or  herds  or  human  face  divine." 

The  men  who  with  him  battled  in  the  halls 
of  state  and  those  as  well  who  upon  the  field 
of  carnage  had  fought  for  Cromwell  and  the 


92         JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

Lord  were  wandering  fugitives  and  outcasts  in 
distant  lands  or  daily  laying  down  their  lives 
upon  the  crimson  scaffold;  where  once  the  rug 
ged,  stern,  indomitable  old  Oliver  had  bowed 
before  the  throne  of  the  Lord  God  of  Israel  a 
licentious,  lascivious,  voluptuous  court  con 
temned  all  that  was  pure  and  righteous  and 
holy.  In  that  hour  of  darkness  and  peril  and 
gloom  John  Milton  gave  to  the  world  a  poem 
that  it  will  never  let  die.  When  the  time 
came  for  him  to  pass  to  where  beyond  these 
voices  there  is  peace  his  dying  lips  were  heard 
to  murmur,  "Still  guides  the  heavenly  vision." 
"Where  there  is  no  vision  the  people  perish." 
It  is  the  vision  splendid  which  impels  men  to 
forsake  the  primrose  path  of  ease  and  walk 
the  rough  and  stony  road  of  usefulness,  a 
road  which  many,  many  times  has  been  the 
path  by  which  the  sons  of  earth  have  reached 
the  tablelands  above. 


'Not  once  or  twice  in  our  fair  island-story 

The  path  of  duty  was  the  way  to  glory. 

He  that,  ever  following  her  commands, 

On  with  toil  of  heart  and  knees  and  hands, 

Through  the  long  gorge  to  the  far  light  has  won 

His  path  upward  and  prevailed, 

Shall  find  the  toppling  crags  of  Duty  scaled 

Are  close  upon  the  shining  tablelands 

To  which  our  God  himself  is  moon  and  sun." 


THE  WHITE  WATER  LILY         93 

He  who  follows  the  vision  climbs  the  steep 
ascent  through  peril,  toil,  and  pain.  Wendell 
Phillips  was  a  ten-talented  man;  fortune  had 
emptied  her  horn  at  his  feet.  He  was  what 
Dr.  Holmes  called  "A  Brahman  of  the  Brah- 
mans."  In  his  veins  flowed  New  England's 
bluest  blood;  physical  beauty  and  mental 
capacity  alike  were  his  portion;  to  him  the 
sirens  of  ambition  sang  their  sweetest  songs; 
the  world  stretched  before  him  full  of  pleasant 
possibilities.  Already  he  saw  himself  the 
idol  of  society,  the  spokesman  of  New  Eng 
land  conservatism  in  the  halls  of  the  nation, 
the  successor  of  the  golden-mouthed  Webster, 
the  compatriot  of  the  idolized  Sumner.  But, 
like  the  note  of  a  battle  trumpet  a  call  re 
sounded  throughout  the  length  and  breadth 
of  the  land,  and  when  the  young  lawyer  heard 
it,  it  did  not  fall  on  unresponsive  ears.  Then 
he  felt,  as  he  afterward  said,  "I  love  inex 
pressibly  these  streets  of  Boston  over  which 
my  mother  led  my  baby  feet;  and  if  God  grants 
me  time  enough,  I  shall  make  them  too  pure 
for  the  footsteps  of  a  slave."  In  the  years  to 
come,  in  every  great  struggle  against  long- 
entrenched  evil,  his  was  the  white  plume  that 
ever  waved  in  the  forefront  of  the  embattled 
hosts  of  righteousness.  Uncompromising,  in 
tolerant,  and  profoundly  mistaken  as  he  some- 


94        JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

times  was,  the  world  is  a  better  place  because 
this  New  England  idealist  lived  in  it.  The 
time  will  come  when  his  eloquence,  "like  the 
song  of  Orpheus,  will  fade  from  a  living  memory 
into  a  doubtful  tale,"  but  two  thousand  years 
hence  the  echoes  of  his  regal  soul  will  not  be 
silent;  the  memory  of  his  dauntless  courage, 
his  heroic  sacrifice,  and  his  unswerving  loyalty 
to  truth  shall  not  have  perished  from  the 
earth. 

The  ideal  ever  molds  the  man.  "He  who 
surrenders  himself  to  a  great  ideal  becomes 
great."  Long  ago  it  was  written,  "As  a  man 
thinketh  in  his  heart  so  is  he."  Lowell  says: 

"Of  all  the  myriad  moods  of  mind 

That  through  the  soul  come  thronging, 
Which  one  was  e'er  so  dear,  so  kind, 

So  beautiful  as  Longing? 
The  thing  we  long  for,  that  we  are 

For  one  transcendent  moment, 
Before  the  Present  poor  and  bare 

Can  make  its  sneering  comment." 

The  man  whose  ideal  is  the  heroic  becomes  a 
hero.  The  youth  who  in  the  realm  of  the 
vision  lives  in  contact  with  greatness  becomes 
great.  They  who  think  of  those  things  which 
are  true  and  honest  and  just  and  pure  and 
lovely  and  of  good  report  grow  in  grace  and 


THE  WHITE  WATER  LILY         95 

in  beauty  of  personality  as  the  years  go  by. 
The  vision  splendid  may  fade  into  the 
light  of  common  day,  but  it  leaves  a  glory 
behind  it. 

Yet  the  youth  who  swam  out  across  the 
lake  for  the  white  water  lily  came  back  with 
out  it.  Many  of  the  noblest  of  earth's  ideals 
have  never  been  realized.  Often  when  we 
seize  the  flower  its  bloom  is  shed.  Sometimes 
when  we  think  of  the  world's  multitudinous 
incongruities  we  feel  that  life  is  a  succession 
of  comedies.  Then  we  can  sympathize  with 
the  words  of  Thackeray:  "Such  people  as 
there  are  living  and  flourishing  in  the  world — 
faithless,  hopeless,  and  charityless.  Let  us 
have  at  them,  dear  friends,  with  might  and 
mam."  But  when  we  look  deeper,  more  and 
more  we  feel  that  life  is  a  tragedy  more  real 
than  any  depicted  by  the  pen  of  an  ^Eschylus 
or  Shakespeare.  In  this  tragi-comedy  of  life 
seldom  is  it  that  man  reaches  the  goal  of  his 
aspirations.  Whittier's  familiar  folk-ballad, 
"Maud  Muller,"  strikes  an  answering  chord 
in  many  a  heart: 

"God  pity  them  both!    And  pity  us  all, 
Who  vainly  the  dreams  of  youth  recall. 

"For  of  all  sad  words  of  tongue  or  pen, 
The  saddest  are  these:  'It  might  have  been!' 


96         JOHN  RtJSKIN,  PREACHER 

"Ah  well!  for  us  all  some  sweet  hope  lies 
Deeply  buried  from  human  eyes; 

"And,  in  the  hereafter,  angels  may 
Boll  the  stone  from  its  grave  away!" 

In  every  life  there  is  some  sad  sweet  "might 
have  been."  There  is  a  faded  hope  and  an 
unrealized  ideal. 

"Something  beautiful  has  vanished, 

And  we  sigh  for  it  in  vain, 
And  we  seek  it  everywhere, 
On  the  earth  and  in  the  air, 
But  it  never  comes  again." 

Yet  often  the  vanished  ideal  is  the  supreme 
glory  of  a  life.  In  an  address  delivered  at 
Harvard  College  one  of  America's  most  eminent 
and  high-minded  statesmen  said:  "Ideals  are 
like  stars.  They  are  not  to  be  reached  but  to 
be  followed." 

I  remember  in  my  boyhood  hearing  the  old 
men  talk  about  the  underground  railway 
days  when  the  rural  calm  of  my  native  valley 
was  broken  by  the  advent  of  the  Southern 
slave  drivers,  with  their  iron  fetters  and  their 
baying  hounds,  in  search  of  their  runaway 
property.  Often  have  I  been  shown  the  lonely 
road  by  which  these  pursued  and  timorous 
black  men  stole  by  night  from  the  valley  to 
the  hospitable  farmhouse  among  the  blue  hills 


THE  WHITE  WATER  LILY         97 

to  the  north.  Many  a  time  on  snowy  moon 
light  nights  as  I  traveled  that  road  I  thought 
of  the  dusky  pilgrims  from  the  sloping  banks 
of  the  rivers  of  Old  Virginia  and  the  cotton- 
whitened  fields  of  Dixie's  southernmost  lands. 
Often  I  saw  above  me,  as  my  thoughts  turned 
to  those  who  had  once  trodden  that  winding 
highway,  the  north  star  which  those  wan 
derers  followed  so  many  weary  miles  amid  the 
thick  darkness  of  night,  shining  pure,  steady, 
and  serene  just  as  it  shone  on  untold  genera 
tions  of  those  whom  here  we  see  no  more. 
They  who  followed  that  star  never  reached  it, 
but  they  reached  the  freedom  for  which  they 
longed.  To  them  it  was  the  beacon  which 
led  to  liberty.  A  man's  ideal  is  his  polar  star; 
he  may  never  attain  it,  but  by  following  it 
he  may  reach  the  higher  altitudes  and  the 
purer  atmosphere  of  a  better  country,  a  land 
where  life  is  larger  and  fuller  and  richer  and 
freer.  It  is  not  the  accomplishment  which 
counts  but  the  honest  effort.  One  of  the  most 
deep-sighted  seers  who  ever  walked  the  shores 
of  earth  once  told  us: 
"Not  on  the  vulgar  mass 

Called  Vork'  must  sentence  pass, 

Things  done  that  took  the  eye  and  had  the  price; 

O'er  which,  from  level  stand, 

The  low  world  laid  its  hand, 

Found  straightway  to  its  mind,  could  value  in  a  trice: 


"But  all  the  world's  coarse  thumb 
And  finger  failed  to  plumb. 
So  passed  in  making  up  the  main  account, 
All  instincts  immature, 
All  purposes  ensure, 

That  weighed  not  as  his  work,  yet  swelled  the  man's 
amount; 

"Thoughts  hardly  to  be  packed 
Into  a  narrow  act, 

Fancies  that  broke  through  language  and  escaped, 
All  I  could  never  be, 
All  men  ignored  in  me, 

That  was  I  worth  to  God,  whose  wheel  the  pitcher 
shaped." 

The  fight  for  the  ideal  may  be  a  losing  fight, 
but  it  is  never  a  fight  in  vain.  Phillips  Brooks 
says,  "If  you  aim  at  the  stars  you  will  hit 
the  tree  tops."  Man  is  better  for  every  high 
ideal,  for  every  noble  purpose,  for  every  lofty 
aspiration.  There  have  been  idealists  who 
have  worn  the  laurel  wreath  of  victory;  there 
have  been  those  who  have  sadly  trodden  the 
via  dolorosa  of  affliction  and  defeat,  but  the 
God  who  notes  the  fall  of  every  sparrow,  who 
hath  clothed  the  lilies  of  the  fields  with  in 
effable  fragrance  and  beauty,  knoweth  them  all 
by  name,  and,  like  the  stars,  they  shall  shine 
in  his  firmament  forever  and  ever.  But  the 
real  idealist  is  not  the  idle  dreamer  of  any 
empty  day  who  sails  away  from  the  lands  of 


THE  WHITE  WATER  LILY         99 

earth   on   ethereal   seas   of   abstractions.     He 
understands  that 

"The  common  problem,  yours,  mine,  everyone's 
Is  not  to  fancy  what  were  fair  in  life 
Provided  it  could  be — but,  finding  first 
What  may  be,  then  find  how  to  make  it  fair 
Up  to  our  means:  a  very  different  thing." 

In  the  never-dying  words  of  Tennyson  we 
read  of  that  glorious  company  who  gathered 
around  the  blameless  Arthur's  throne:  of  the 
pure  Sir  Percival;  of  Gareth  in  all  the  splendor 
of  his  youthful  beauty;  of  Launcelot,  the 
bravest  and  the  strongest  of  the  knights;  of 
Galahad,  with  the  strength  of  ten  because  his 
heart  was  pure.  Upon  a  later,  sadder,  darker 
day  we  hear  the  once  proud  king  tell  of  how 
he  made  them  lay  their  hands  in  his  and 
swear 

"To  reverence  the  King,  as  if  he  were 
Their  conscience,  and  their  conscience  as  their  King. 
To  break  the  heathen  and  uphold  the  Christ, 
To  ride  abroad  redressing  human  wrongs, 
To  speak  no  slander,  no,  nor  listen  to  it, 
To  honor  his  own  word  as  if  his  God's, 
To  lead  sweet  lives  in  purest  chastity, 
To  love  one  maiden  only,  cleave  to  her, 
And  worship  her  by  years  of  noble  deeds, 
Until  they  won  her 


100      JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

Not  only  to  keep  down  the  base  in  man, 
But  teach  high  thought,  and  amiable  words 
And  courtliness,  and  the  desire  of  fame, 
And  love  of  truth  and  all  that  makes  a  man." 

But  there  fell  before  the  lances  of  these  brave 
and  valiant  knights  the  robber  barons  who 
preyed  upon  the  poor.  One  by  one  their 
proud  castles  yielded.  No  more  was  the  long 
howling  of  the  wolves  to  be  heard  amid  the 
snow.  Peace  smiled  again  upon  the  land. 
The  wilderness  and  the  solitary  place  were 
made  glad  and  the  desert  blossomed  as  the 
rose.  Chivalrous  knights  worshiped  at  the 
shrine  of  fair  and  gracious  womanhood.  A 
wise  and  good  ruler  in  many-towered  Camelot 
meted  out  even-handed  justice  to  all  who 
bowed  before  his  throne.  But  there  came  a 
time  when  war,  famine,  and  desolation  once 
more  cast  their  shadow  over  Arthur's  realm, 
when  a  renegade  knighthood  and  a  faithless 
queen  brought  sorrow  to  the  heart  of  the 
blameless  ruler,  when  in  his  anguish  he  sadly 
cried,  "My  knights  have  followed  wandering 
fires  and  left  present  wrongs  to  right  them 
selves."  Sad  is  it  indeed  when  life-detached 
ideals  call  men  away  from  the  common  duties  of 
common  life  to  follow  a  glimmering  light  which 
leads  to  nowhere;  nevertheless  the  world  can 
not  but  pay  its  meed  of  praise,  of  well-deserved 


THE  WHITE  WATER  LILY        101 

praise,  to  the  unswerving  tenacity,  the  daunt 
less  daring,  and  the  heroic  spirit  of  self-sacrifice 
which  very  often  is  the  portion  of  the  follower 
of  the  wandering  fire.  But  lofty  idealism  with 
out  practical  efficiency  is  of  little  avail.  The 
efficient  idealist  is  no  melancholy,  mild-eyed 
lotus  eater,  who  muses  and  dreams  and 
broods  with  half-shut  eyes  while  the  great 
currents  of  life  sweep  irresistibly  by.  Yet  it 
is  "In  deeds  he  takes  delight."  All  of  life 
is  not  included  in  the  "practical."  As  the 
hart  panteth  after  the  water  brooks  the  spirit 
of  man  longs  to  rise,  with  wings  as  eagles, 
above  the  things  of  tune  and  place.  No  life 
is  so  dark  that  it  cannot  be  illumined  by  the 
presence  of  the  heaven-born  ideal;  no  heart 
is  so  despondent  that  it  cannot  pulsate  with 
hope.  The  white  water  lily  very  often  sheds 
its  fragrance  upon  lonely  moor  and  desolate 
fen.  "We  are  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made 
on."  Man  can  never  live  by  bread  alone. 
He  must  endure  as  seeing  Him  who  is  invisible. 


vn 

THE  FUNDAMENTAL  TEACHING  OF 

THOMAS  CARLYLE1 

^ 

WHEN  Thomas  Carlyle  gave  his  inaugural 
address  as  Lord  Rector  of  the  University  of 
Edinburgh,  memory  threw  around  him  the 
light  of  other  days  and  he  lived  once  more 
in  that  year  of  the  long  ago  when  he  left  the 
hills  of  Dumfriesshire  for  the  ancient  seat  of 
learning  in  whose  halls  he  once  more  stood. 
"It  is  now,"  he  said,  "fifty-six  years  gone  last 
November  since  I  first  entered  your  city,  a 
boy  of  not  quite  fourteen,  to  attend  the  classes 
here,  and  gain  knowledge  of  all  kinds,  I  could 
little  guess  what,  my  poor  mind  full  of  wonder 
and  awe-struck  expectation."  Unlike  his  Amer 
ican  friend,  Emerson,  Carlyle  did  not  spring 
from  a  line  of  scholars.  He  was  the  first  of 
his  race  to  grapple  with  the  mysteries  of  books. 
His  boyhood  home  was  a  peasant's  cottage, 
and  the  greatest  lessons  of  his  life  were  those 
which  he  learned  by  its  fireside.  His  strong, 

1  By  permission  of  The  Methodist  Review,  Nashville,  Tennessee. 

102 


THOMAS  CARLYLE  103 

sturdy,  earnest,  veracious  father  and  his  gentle, 
affectionate,  yearning,  solicitous  mother  were 
both  fundamentally  religious.  Their  religious 
heritage  was  Dissent.  They  belonged  to  the 
group  known  as  "Burgher-Seceders,"  or  "New 
Lichts."  Their  son  tells  us  that  "a  man  who 
awoke  to  the  belief  that  he  actually  had  a 
soul  to  be  saved  or  lost  was  apt  to  be  found 
among  the  dissenting  people."  The  most  ten 
derly  cherished  ambition  of  the  Carlyles  for 
their  nobly  endowed  first-born  son  was  that 
some  day  he  should  "wag  his  pow  in  the 
pulpit."  It  was  to  prepare  him  to  be  a  spiritual 
leader  that  they  toiled  and  sacrificed  in  order 
to  send  him  to  the  university. 

But,  as  has  been  true  of  many  another  father 
and  mother,  the  hopes  of  James  and  Janet 
Carlyle  were  not  to  be  realized  in  the  way 
which  they  expected.  In  those  years  at  Edin 
burgh  the  young  student  was  called  upon  to 
battle  with  "spiritual  dragons."  In  his  life 
there  came  hours  when  he  felt  that  the  old 
faith,  hallowed  by  the  sweetest  and  most 
precious  memories,  was  naught  but  the  idle 
dream  of  a  darkened  age.  It  also  became 
more  and  more  apparent  that  a  dyspeptic 
genius  like  Thomas  Carlyle  would  by  no  means 
be  an  ideal  pastor  for  any  people.  He  was 
called  upon  to  endure  years  of  doubt  and 


104       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

drifting.    But  as  the  years  passed  one  by  one 
the  clouds  vanished  from  his  sky. 

It  was  in  June,  1821,  when  he  was  twenty- 
six  years  of  age,  when,  as  he  says,  he  "authen 
tically  took  the  devil  by  the  nose"  and  began 
to  attain  those  convictions  by  which  his  later 
life  was  governed.  In  1830,  in  speaking  of 
this  period  of  liberation,  he  says,  "This  year  I 
found  that  I  had  conquered  all  my  skep 
ticisms,  agonizing  doubts,  fearful  wrestlings 
with  the  foul,  vile,  and  soul -murdering  mud- 
gods  of  my  epoch;  had  escaped  from  Tartarus, 
with  all  its  Phlegetons  and  Stygian  quagmires, 
and  was  emerging  free  in  spirit  into  an  eternal 
blue  of  ether  where,  blessed  be  heaven,  I  have, 
for  the  spiritual  part,  ever  since  lived,  looking 
down  upon  the  welterings  of  my  poor  fellow- 
creatures  in  such  multitudes  and  millions  still 
stuck  in  the  fatal  elements,  and  have  no  con 
cern  whatever  in  their  Puseyisms,  ritualisms, 
metaphysical  controversies,  and  cobwebberies. 
I  understood  well  what  the  old  Christian  people 
meant  by  conversion — by  God's  infinite  mercy 
to  them.  I  had  in  effect  gained  an  immense 
victory,  and  for  a  number  of  years,  in  spite 
of  nerves  and  chagrins,  had  a  constant  in 
ward  happiness  that  was  quite  royal  and  su 
preme,  in  which  temporal  evil  was  transient 
and  insignificant,  and  which  essentially  re- 


THOMAS  CARLYLE  105 

mains  with  my  soul,  though  far  oftener  eclipsed 
and  lying  deeper  down  than  then.  Once  more 
thank  heaven  for  its  highest  gift." 

The  doubts  which  so  long  like  a  fog  had 
surrounded  him  had  departed.  In  the  battle 
with  fear  faith  was  triumphant.  It  could  be 
said  of  him  as  Tennyson  wrote  of  Arthur 
Hallam : 

"He  fought  his  doubts  and  gathered  strength, 
He  would  not  make  the  judgment  blind, 
He  faced  the  specters  of  the  mind 
And  laid  them;  thus  he  came  at  length 

"To  find  a  stronger  faith  his  own, 

And  power  was  with  him  in  the  night, 
Which  makes  the  darkness  and  the  light, 
And  dwells  not  in  the  light  alone." 

From  that  time  forth  in  many  a  noble  vol 
ume,  some  of  which  the  world  will  not  willingly 
let  die,  Thomas  Carlyle  preached  a  gospel, 
which  with  "true  prophetic  eloquence"  has 
reached  the  hearts  of  men.  No  man  has 
spoken  to  our  modern  times  with  more  of  the 
spirit  and  power  of  the  stern,  militant,  truth- 
loving,  truth-telling  prophets  of  Israel.  Over 
against  the  cynical  doubt  of  the  skeptic,  Car 
lyle  set  the  "Everlasting  Yea"  of  the  great 
God.  He  was  a  heaven-sent  messenger  pro 
claiming  the  law  of  truth,  the  nobility  of 


106       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

labor,  the  glory  of  independence  and  the  dom 
inance  of  the  "eternal  verities."  He  was  a 
preacher  of  repentance,  of  righteousness,  and 
of  retribution.  He  was  perhaps  the  most 
potent  ethical  and  religious  force  of  his  cen 
tury.  And  to-day,  when  most  of  the  shovel- 
hatted,  mammon-worshiping  ecclesiastics  of  his 
generation  have  gone  their  journey  to  a  lasting 
oblivion,  the  voice  of  the  rugged,  titanic  old 
Scotchman  is  still  lifted  against  wrong  and 
still  sounds  a  message  of  inspiration  and  of  hope. 
Carlyle's  theology,  like  the  man  himself,  is 
a  bundle  of  paradoxes.  To  attempt  to  un 
ravel  its  intricate  threads  would  mean  the 
facing  of  a  task  of  almost  terrifying  formidable- 
ness.  The  author  of  Sartor  Resartus  and 
The  French  Revolution  exercised  to  the  ut 
most  the  prerogative  of  genius  to  be  incon 
sistent.  But  at  least  a  word  may  be  said  in 
regard  to  the  great  writer's  fundamental  creed. 
Most  emphatically  he  was  not,  as  has  been 
inanely  said,  "a  great  thinker  without  a 
theology."  No  man  can  do  real  thinking  in 
regard  to  the  vaster  issues  of  life  and  entirely 
ignore  theology.  Professor  Nichol  in  his  life 
of  Carlyle,  after  attempting  to  find  Carlyle's 
creed  by  the  process  of  elimination,  writes  the 
following  pregnant  paragraph:  "What,  then,  is 
left  of  Carlyle's  creed?  Logically  little,  emo- 


THOMAS  CARLYLE  107 

tionally  much.  If  it  must  be  defined,  it  is 
that  of  a  Theist  with  a  difference.  A  spirit 
of  flame  from  the  empyrean,  he  found  no 
food  in  the  cold  Deism  of  the  eighteenth  cen 
tury.  He  inherited  and  determined  to  persist 
in  the  belief  that  there  was  a  personal  God — a 
Maker,  voiceless,  formless."  To  Emerson  he 
writes  in  1836,  "My  belief  in  a  special  Prov 
idence  grows  yearly  stronger,  unsubduable, 
impregnable";  and  later  he  said,  "Some  strange 
belief  in  Providence  was  always  with  me  at 
intervals."  Thus  while  asserting  that  "all 
manner  of  pulpits  are  as  good  as  broken  and 
abolished,"  he  clings  to  the  old  Ecclefechan 
days. 

"To  the  last,"  says  Mr.  Froude,  "he  believed 
as  strongly  as  ever  a  Hebrew  prophet  did  in 
spiritual  religion."  He  recommended  prayer  as 
"A  turning  of  one's  soul  to  the  highest." 
Many  times  he  spoke  confidently  of  his  belief 
that  when  a  man  dies  he  shall  live  again.  On 
the  death  of  Mrs.  Carlyle's  mother  he  wrote 
to  her:  "We  shall  yet  go  to  her.  God  is  great. 
God  is  good."  But  later  this  confident  assur 
ance  seems  to  have  been  replaced  by  a  calm, 
uncertain  hope. 

Intellectually  Carlyle  had  journeyed  far  from 
the  faith  of  the  Burgher-Seceders  of  his  native 
village,  but  to  the  end  of  his  life  he  was  essen- 


108       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

tially  Puritan.  He  tried  to  tear  away  the 
husks  and  keep  the  kernel.  He  was  not,  how 
ever,  entirely  successful  in  doing  this.  Carlyle 
would  have  been  a  happier  man,  and  in  some 
respects  a  better  man,  if  his  life  had  been 
dominated  by  the  vital  Christianity  of  a 
Robert  Browning.  He  excoriated  Unitarians, 
but  intellectually  had  much  in  common  with 
them.  Certain  essentials  of  Christianity  he 
threw  away  as  "Hebrew  old  clothes."  It  is 
equally  true  that  Carlyle  was  never  able  to 
completely  rid  himself  of  "the  old  clothes" 
of  Calvinism.  All  of  his  life  he  did  his  think 
ing  more  in  terms  of  the  Old  Testament  than 
of  the  New.  Herein  lay  his  strength  and  his 
weakness.  He  has  been  plausibly  called  "A 
Calvinist  tinctured  with  German  idealism." 
The  Kantean  transcendentalism  with  which 
Carlyle's  wide  reading  had  brought  him  into 
contact  had  to  some  extent  opened  the  win 
dows  of  his  mind.  He  had  naturally  discarded 
some  of  the  monstrosities  of  the  crude  Puri 
tanism  of  his  early  environment.  But  the 
metaphysic  of  Calvinism  was  the  most  potent 
influence  of  his  life. 

It  is  by  turning  from  Carlyle's  ill  digested, 
haphazard  theology  to  his  militant,  glowing, 
and  sincere  philosophy  of  life  that  we  find 
the  source  of  his  Herculean  strength.  Even 


THOMAS  CARLYLE  109 

though  clouds  and  darkness  at  times  surrounded 
him  for  over  half  a  century,  he  preached  to 
upward-striving,  light-seeking  men  and  women 
the  gospel  of  the  reality  of  the  spiritual.  He 
called  his  generation  to  turn  from  the  meat 
which  perisheth  to  the  eternal  verities.  To 
him  as  to  any  spiritually  minded  man,  the 
idea  of  an  absentee  God  and  a  mechanical 
universe  was  chilling  and  repulsive.  The 
thought  of  God  and  of  his  presence  in  the 
world  inspired  some  of  Carlyle's  most  mag 
nificent  lines.  In  the  chapter  of  Sartor  Resartus 
entitled  "The  Everlasting  Yea"  we  read: 
"Fore-shadows,  call  them  rather  fore-splendors 
of  that  Truth  and  Beginning  of  Truths,  fell 
mysteriously  over  my  soul.  Sweeter  than 
Dayspring  to  the  shipwrecked  in  Nova  Zembla; 
ah,  like  the  mother's  voice  to  her  little  child 
that  strays  bewildered,  weeping,  in  unknown 
tumults;  like  soft  streamings  of  celestial  music 
to  my  too-exasperated  heart,  came  that  Evan 
gel.  The  Universe  is  not  dead  and  demoniacal, 
a  charnelhouse  with  specters;  but  Godlike 
and  my  Father's!" 

To  an  age  of  preeminent  scientific  achieve 
ment  he  said:  "With  our  Sciences  and  our 
Cyclopedias,  we  are  apt  to  forget  the  divine- 
ness  in  these  laboratories  of  ours.  We  ought 
not  to  forget  it.  That  once  well  forgotten,  I 


110       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

know  not  what  else  were  worth  remembering. 
Most  sciences,  I  think,  were  then  a  very  dead 
thing;  withered,  contentious,  empty — a  thistle 
'in  late  autumn.  These  sciences  without  this 
are  but  the  dead  timber;  it  is  not  the  growing 
tree  and  forest — which  gives  ever-new  timber, 
among  other  things.  Man  cannot  know  either 
unless  he  can  worship  in  some  way." 

In  Carlyle's  day  materialism  as  a  philosophy 
had  its  able  and  aggressive  defenders.  To-day 
there  is  none  so  poor  as  to  do  it  reverence. 
But  that  which  counts  is  not  so  much  what 
a  man  says  he  believes,  or  thinks  he  believes, 
but  that  which  he  really  believes  with  sufficient 
intensity  to  translate  into  life.  Wendell  Phillips 
once  scathingly  said  that  if  an  American  saw 
a  silver  dollar  on  the  other  side  of  hell  he 
would  jump  in  for  it.  In  his  excellent  volume 
Personal  Religion  and  the  Social  Awakening 
Professor  Ross  Finney  says:  "The  philosophy 
of  human  life  that  dominates  our  own  age, 
permeates  its  atmosphere,  and  obsesses  the 
thought  of  nearly  all  our  people  is  essentially 
materialistic.  We  are  convinced  that  a  man's 
life  consists  in  the  abundance  of  the  things 
which  he  possesses."  We  seek  for  evidences 
of  material  success  and  power  because  they 
constitute  the  measure  of  value  in  modern 
life.  Even  in  professions  which  exist  primarily 


THOMAS  CARLYLE  111 

to  disseminate  ideals  there  exists  practically 
the  same  standard  of  values.  The  trail  of 
the  serpent  is  everywhere.  Never  was  there 
a  more  vital  need  of  men  keeping  before  them 
the  inclusive  truth  that  the  fundamental  values 
of  life  are  not  material  but  spiritual.  In  Heroes 
and  Hero-Worship  Carlyle  said,  "A  man's 
religion  is  the  great  fact  in  regard  to  his  life." 
And  with  all  of  his  dim  gropings  and  thunder 
ous  sophistries  for  over  half  a  century  to 
England  and  to  mankind  in  fiery  words  of 
golden  eloquence  he  preached  the  Pauline 
gospel:  "To  be  spiritually  minded  is  life,  and 
to  be  carnally  minded  is  death." 

Not  only  against  mammonism  did  he  lift 
his  mighty  sword,  but  with  the  same  fierce 
energy  and  titanic  power  he  battled  against 
the  vapid  dilettantism  which  sees  in  life  nothing 
but  a  primrose  path  of  pleasure.  There  came 
a  time  when  he  clearly  saw  that  blessedness 
lies  not  in  receiving  but  in  giving,  not  in 
enjoying  but  in  doing.  The  thought  of  the 
sacredness  of  work  loomed  large  in  the 
Carlylean  philosophy  of  life.  In  Past  and 
Present  we  read:  "All  true  work  is  sacred; 
in  all  true  work,  were  it  but  hand-labor,  there 
is  something  of  divineness.  Labor,  wide  as 
the  Earth,  has  its  summit  in  Heaven.  Sweat 
of  the  brow;  and  from  that  up  to  sweat  of  the 


112       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

brain,  sweat  of  the  heart,  which  includes  all 
Kepler  calculations,  Newton  meditations,  all 
Martyrdoms — up  to  that  'agony  of  bloody 
sweat'  which  all  men  have  called  divine. 
O  brother,  if  this  is  not  'worship'  the  more  the 
pity  for  worship,  for  this  is  the  noblest  thing 
yet  discovered  under  God's  sky.  Who  art 
thou  that  complainest  of  thy  life  of  toil? 
Complain  not.  Look  up,  my  wearied  brother; 
see  thy  fellow  workmen  there,  in  God's  eter 
nity."  Against  the  "clay-given  mandate, 
'EAT  THOU  AND  BE  FILLED,'  "  he  placed  the 
"God-given  mandate,  'WORK  THOU  IN  WELL 
DOING.'  ' 

The  idea  of  work  cannot  be  dissociated  from 
duty.  Carlyle's  Calvinistic  ethics  was  by  no 
means  entirely  negative  in  his  life.  He  was 
indoctrinated  with  the  old  Puritan  idea  of 
righteousness.  This  inevitably  meant  an  un 
swerving  loyalty  to  duty.  This  son  of  the 
ironside  Scottish  Calvinists  believed  not  merely 
in  work  but  in  work  well  done.  As  he  looked 
at  the  strong  stone  walls  built  by  his  father, 
James  Carlyle,  master  mason  of  Ecclefechan, 
he  said,  "Let  me  write  my  books  the  way  he 
built  his  houses."  "The  best  way,"  he  says, 
"to  prepare  for  the  great  duties  of  life  is  to 
do  well  the  small  duty."  Carlyle's  teaching 
did  not  consist  of  a  conglomerate  of  life-de- 


THOMAS  CARLYLE  113 

tached  theories;  he  was  eminently  practical. 
In  one  of  his  noblest  passages  he  says:  "The 
latest  gospel  in  this  world  is,  Know  thy  work 
and  do  it.  Know  thyself:  long  enough  has  that 
poor  'self'  of  thine  tormented  thee;  thou  wilt 
never  get  to  'know'  it,  I  believe.  Think  it  not 
thy  business,  this  knowing  of  thyself;  thou 
art  an  unknowable  individual:  know  what 
thou  canst  work  at,  and  work  at  it  like  a 
Hercules." 

And  again  he  says:  "It  has  been  written, 
'an  endless  significance  lies  in  work';  a  man 
perfects  himself  by  working.  Foul  jungles  are 
cleared  away,  fair  seed-fields  rise  instead,  and 
stately  cities;  and  withal  the  man  himself 
first  ceases  to  be  a  jungle  and  foul  unwhole 
some  desert  thereby.  Consider  how,  even  in 
the  meanest  sorts  of  labor,  the  whole  soul  of 
man  is  composed  into  a  kind  of  real  harmony 
the  instant  he  sets  himself  to  work.  Doubt, 
Desire,  Sorrow,  Remorse,  Indignation,  Despair 
itself — all  these  like  Hell  dogs  lie  beleaguering 
the  soul  of  the  poor  dayworker  as  of  every 
man:  but  he  bends  himself  with  free  valor 
against  his  task,  and  all  these  are  stilled,  all 
these  shrink  murmuring  far  into  then*  caves. 
The  man  is  now  a  man.  The  blessed  glow  of 
Labor  is  in  him;  is  it  not  as  a  purifying  fire, 
wherein  all  poison  is  burnt  up,  and  of  sour 


114       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

smoke  itself  there  is  made  a  bright  blessed 
flame?" 

Carlyle  understood  that  "happiness  to  be 
got  must  be  forgot."  The  ripening  experience 
of  life  taught  him  that  if  a  man  made  it  the 
object  of  his  life  to  seek  happiness,  he  was 
predooming  himself  to  an  existence  of  empty 
futility.  He  almost  incessantly  emphasized  the 
fact  that  life  is  no  mere  "May-game  for  men." 
To  his  friend  Sterling  he  said,  "Woe  unto  them 
that  are  at  ease  in  Zion."  In  Sartor  Resartus 
he  reiterates,  "Love  not  pleasure,  love  God." 
To  him  as  to  the  old  Hebrews  with  whom  he 
had  so  much  in  common,  life  was  terribly  and 
tragically  earnest.  With  another  great  Puritan 
Carlyle  believed  that  throughout  his  years 
upon  earth  he  must  live  "As  ever  in  his  great 
Taskmaster's  eye." 

The  old  Calvinistic  emphasis  upon  retribu 
tion  was  also  one  of  the  doctrines  which  he 
did  not  discard  as  a  relic  of  mediaeval  barbarism. 
The  fact  of  sin  loomed  large  in  his  thinking. 
There  are  to-day  those  who  by  means  of 
widely  disseminated  teachings,  miscalled  ethical, 
are  permeating  American  life  with  the  baneful 
falsehood  that  there  is  no  clear  distinction 
between  right  and  wrong.  To  Carlyle  right 
and  wrong  were  considerably  more  than 
"ancient,  outworn,  Puritanic  traditions."  Eze- 


THOMAS  CARLYLE  115 

kiel's  awful  truth,  "The  soul  that  sinneth,  it 
shall  die"  was  of  mighty  import  in  his  theology. 
In  his  Edinburgh  address,  in  speaking  to  the 
students  of  his  time-honored  Alma  Mater  he 
said:  "If  you  will  believe  'me,  you  who  are 
young,  yours  is  the  golden  season  of  life.  As 
you  have  heard  it  called,  so  it  verily  is  the 
seedtime  of  life;  in  which  if  you  do  sow  tares 
instead  of  wheat,  you  cannot  expect  to  reap 
well  afterward."  "Platitudes"  some  would 
call  such  words.  They  certainly  contain  no 
new  thought.  Paul,  in  his  letter  to  the  Gala- 
tians,  used  the  same  comparison  to  express  the 
same  thought,  "Whatsoever  a  man  soweth  that 
shall  he  also  reap."  Yet  no  greater  truth  ever 
came  from  the  heart  and  mind  of  man.  He 
who  has  learned  it  to  do  it  has  mastered  the 
greatest  lesson  of  life.  Carlyle  never  wrote  a 
line  in  conflict  with  this  fundamental  ethical 
law.  He  never,  as  did  Goethe  in  Faust,  de 
picted  life  in  such  a  way  as  to  give  his  reader 
the  impression  that  a  man  could  sin  with  im 
punity.  It  must  be  admitted  that  in  his 
inexcusable  whitewashing  of  that  incarnation  of 
blood  and  murder  known  as  Frederick  the 
Great  he  attempts  to  gloss  over  some  of  the 
most  nefarious  deeds  ever  perpetrated  by  hu 
man  beings.  But  taking  Carlyle's  writings  in 
mass  they  show  that  he  loved  right  and  hated 


116       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

wrong  with  all  the  intensity  of  his  Puritan 
father. 

His  description  of  the  deathbed  of  Louis  XV 
is  in  itself  a  sermon  on  "the  exceeding  sin- 
fulness  of  sin."  "Yes,  poor  Louis,  Death  has 
found  thee.  No  palace  walls  or  lifeguards, 
gorgeous  tapestries  or  gilt  buckram  of  stiffest 
ceremonial  could  keep  him  out;  but  he  is 
here,  here  at  thy  very  life-breath  and  will 
extinguish  it.  ...  Unhappy  man,  there  as  thou 
turnest,  in  dull  agony,  on  thy  bed  of  weariness, 
what  a  thought  is  thine!  Purgatory  and  Hell- 
fire,  now  as  all  too  possible  in  the  prospect; 
in  the  retrospect,  alas,  what  thing  didst  thou 
do  that  were  not  better  undone; . . .  what 
sorrow  hadst  thou  mercy  on?  Do  the  'five 
hundred  thousand'  ghosts  who  sank  shame 
fully  on  so  many  battlefields  from  Rossbach 
to  Quebec,  that  thy  Harlot  might  take  revenge 
for  an  epigram — crowd  round  thee  in  this 
hour?  Thy  foul  Harem;  the  curses  of  mothers, 
the  tears  and  infamy  of  daughters?  Miserable 
man!  thou  'hast  done  evil  as  thou  couldst': 
thy  whole  existence  seems  one  hideous  abortion 
and  mistake  of  Nature;  the  use  and  meaning 
of  thee  not  yet  known.  Wert  thou  a  fabulous 
Griffin  devouring  the  works  of  men;  daily 
dragging  virgins  to  thy  cave;  clad  also  in 
scales  that  no  spear  would  pierce:  no  spear 


THOMAS  CARLYLE  117 

but  Death's?  A  Griffin  not  fabulous  but  real! 
Frightful,  O  Louis,  seem  these  moments  for 
thee. —  We  will  pry  no  further  into  the  hor 
rors  of  a  sinner's  deathbed." 

Carlyle's  ethics  was  not  a  mass  of  abstract 
philosophical  theorems.  It  was  rooted  and 
grounded  in  reality.  He  understood  the  in 
separable  relation  existing  between  conduct  and 
life.  His  fundamental  ethical  viewpoint  can 
best  be  expressed  in  the  words  of  Emerson, 
"The  specific  stripes  may  follow  late  after  the 
offense,  but  they  follow  because  they  accom 
pany  it.  Crime  and  punishment  grow  out  of 
one  stem.  Punishment  is  a  fruit  that,  unsus 
pected,  ripens  within  the  flower  of  the  pleasure 
which  concealed  it."  It  was  Carlyle  himself 
who  said  that  Napoleon's  empire  was  doomed 
to  destruction  because  it  was  founded  on  in 
justice.  The  Scottish  Puritan,  like  Goethe, 
his  exceedingly  unpuritanic  teacher,  knew  full 
well  that  although  "the  mills  of  God  grind 
slowly,  they  grind  exceeding  small."  Some 
have  said  that  he  taught  that  might  makes 
right.  This,  however,  is  almost  diametrically 
opposite  to  his  teaching.  Instead  he  believed 
that  right  makes  might.  He  knew  that  the 
wages  of  sin  is  death,  and  this  ancient  and 
universal  truth  of  life  he  unflinchingly  faced. 

Taking  it  all  in  all,  however,  it  was  Carlyle's 


118       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

social  teachings  which  had  the  greatest  in 
fluence  upon  the  life  and  thought  of  his  own 
and  succeeding  generations.  Carlyle  would 
have  been  a  mighty  force  for  social  better 
ment  had  he  done  nothing  more  than  inspire 
John  Ruskin  to  devote  his  life  to  righting  deep- 
intrenched  wrongs.  But  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  books  like  Chartism  and  Past  and  Present 
were  potent  weapons  in  the  battle  for  the 
industrial  and  social  liberation  of  the  English 
people.  Nowhere  is  the  human  problem  of 
those  early  days  better  stated  than  in  these 
words:  "England  is  full  of  wealth,  of  multi 
farious  produce,  supply  for  human  want  of 
every  kind;  yet  England  is  dying  of  inanition. 
With  unabated  bounty  the  land  of  England 
blooms  and  grows;  waving  with  yellow  har 
vests;  thick-studded  with  workshops,  industrial 
implements,  with  fifteen  millions  of  workers 
understood  to  be  the  strongest,  the  cunningest, 
and  the  willingest  our  earth  ever  had;  these 
men  are  here;  the  work  they  have  done,  the 
fruit  they  have  realized  is  here,  abundant, 
exuberant  on  every  hand  of  us:  and  behold 
some  baleful  fiat  as  of  enchantment  has  gone 
forth,  saying,  'Touch  it  not,  ye  workers,  ye 
master- workers,  ye  master-idlers;  none  of 
you  can  touch  it,  no  man  of  you  shall  be  the 
better  for  it;  this  is  enchanted  fruit!'  On 


THOMAS  CARLYLE  119 

the  poor  workers  such  a  fiat  falls  first,  in  its 
rudest  shape;  neither  can  the  rich  master- 
idlers,  nor  any  richest  or  highest  man  escape, 
but  all  are  alike  to  be  brought  low  with  it, 
and  made  poor  in  the  money  sense  or  a  far 
fataler  one."  His  description  in  Past  and 
Present  of  the  paupers  in  the  workhouse  of 
St.  Ives  is  one  which  it  is  not  easy  to  forget. 
Economics  he  excoriated  as  the  "dismal  sci 
ence";  sociology  was  then  in  its  dim  begin 
nings;  but  he  could  readily  see  that  where 
there  was  starving  in  the  midst  of  plenty, 
poverty  surrounded  by  luxury,  sordid  bru 
tality  side  by  side  with  swinish  epicureanism 
there  was  a  need  of  plain  words  and  purpose 
ful  action. 

The  years  between  1830  and  1850,  the  period 
in  which  was  accomplished  Carlyle's  most 
distinctive  work,  were  marked  by  a  political, 
industrial,  and  social  revolution  of  tremendous 
moment.  The  people  were  beginning  to  make 
themselves  heard.  The  dominant  classes  were 
compelled  to  relinquish  a  few  of  the  privileges 
which  an  unjust  caste  system  had  given  them. 
In  1828  the  Test  Act  discriminating  against 
Protestant  Dissenters  was  repealed.  The  next 
year  the  Catholics  won  their  victory  in  the 
passage  of  the  Catholic  Emancipation  Bill. 
The  First  Reform  Bill  after  a  strenuous  fight 


120       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

was  passed  in  1832.  This  bill  was  essentially 
a  victory  for  the  bourgeoisie  in  their  battle 
with  the  rural  landowning  class.  To  the 
laborer  it  meant  little,  but  it  was  a  step  in 
the  right  direction.  During  the  next  decade 
considerable  legislation  protecting  the  rank  and 
file  of  the  people  from  economic  and  social 
injustice  was  placed  upon  the  statute  books 
of  the  realm.  The  great  event  of  the  early 
years  of  the  reign  of  Victoria  was  the  Anti- 
Corn  Law  movement  led  by  Richard  Cobden 
and  John  Bright.  All  over  England  men, 
women,  and  children  were  on  the  verge  of 
starvation  on  account  of  the  high  tariff  laws 
which  had  been  passed  to  conserve  the  priv 
ileges  of  the  landowning,  game-preserving, 
lawmaking  aristocracy.  The  fight  was  long 
and  bitter,  but  June  25,  1846,  the  Corn  Laws 
were  repealed.  Later  came  the  agitation  for 
a  people's  charter,  giving  the  people  of 
England  still  greater  governmental  prerogatives. 
This  movement,  which  expressed  the  noblest 
idealism  of  many  lives  and  contended  for 
nothing  more  than  simple  justice,  was  not 
especially  fortunate  in  its  leadership  and 
directly  accomplished  but  little.  Those  were 
thrilling  days  in  which  to  live.  And  Carlyle 
was  not  unawake  to  what  was  taking  place 
around  him. 


THOMAS  CARLYLE  121 

He  spoke  of  Peel's  abolition  of  the  Corn 
Laws  as  "the  greatest  veracity  ever  done." 
His  interpretation  of  the  deeper  significance  of 
chartism  is  both  sympathetic  and  luminous. 
To  many  a  young  soldier  in  the  army  of  the 
common  good  his  words  were  both  inspired 
and  inspiring.  The  solution  of  the  social 
problems  by  means  of  a  benevolent  despotism, 
such  as  he  delineates  in  Past  and  Present,  is 
of  course  palpably  impossible.  But  no  man 
of  his  generation  had  more  at  heart  the  ills 
of  fellow  men  than  Thomas  Carlyle.  And  no 
man  more  lucidly  and  sincerely  presented  their 
cause.  Some  of  his  words  sound  surprisingly 
modern  as  we  read  them  to-day.  But  in  his 
demanding  of  economic  justice  he  never  failed 
to  remember  the  fundamental  reality  of  the 
spiritual.  Here  are  words  not  without  a  high 
significance  in  the  social  gospel  of  Carlyle: 
"Brother,  thou  art  a  man,  I  think;  thou  art 
not  a  mere  building  Beaver  or  a  two-legged 
Cotton-spider;  thou  hast  verily  a  soul  in  thee, 
asphyxied  or  otherwise!  Sooty  Manchester,  it 
is  too  built  on  the  infinite  Abysses;  over- 
spanned  by  the  skyey  Firmaments;  and  there 
is  birth  in  it,  and  death  in  it;  and  it  is  every 
whit  as  wonderful,  as  fearful,  as  unimaginable 
as  the  oldest  Salem  or  Prophetic  City.  Go 
or  stand,  in  what  time,  in  what  place  we 


122       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

will,    are    there    not    immensities,    Eternities 
over  us,  around  us,  in  us." 

Carlyle's  passion  for  social  justice,  unlike 
that  of  some  modern  intellectual  amateurs,  was 
not  an  evanescent  fad.  It  sprang  from  his 
ingrained  interest  in  humanity.  Like  Ben 
Adhem  he  loved  his  fellow  men.  In  Carlyle's 
letters  as  found  in  the  biography  by  Froude 
there  are  many  comments  upon  human  beings 
which  give  to  the  reader  the  impression  that 
Carlyle  was  anything  but  a  lover  of  his  kind. 
It  would  be  futile  to  deny  that  the  sage  of 
Chelsea  was  very  much  in  the  habit  of  throw 
ing  showers  of  vitriol  on  all  men  and  things. 
Both  he  and  his  gifted  wife  were  adept  in  the 
art  of  making  verbal  etchings  of  the  indi 
viduals  whom  they  met  from  time  to  time. 
And  we  are  told  that  in  etching  use  is  made 
of  acids.  Neither  of  the  Carlyles  was  frugal 
of  acidic  comment.  His  description  of  Rogers 
is  only  too  typical:  "A  most  sorrowful,  dis 
tressing,  distracted  old  phenomena,  hovering 
over  the  rim  of  deep  eternities  with  nothing 
but  light  babble,  fatuity,  vanity,  and  the 
frostiest  London  wit  in  mouth."  One  does  not 
have  to  read  many  pages  of  Carlyle's  letters 
in  order  to  collect  a  few  dozen  acrimonious 
personalities.  But  too  much  stress  must  not 
be  laid  on  these  acerbities.  Jle  liked  to  talk. 


THOMAS  CARLYLE  123 

and  some  of  his  characterizations  read  much 
more  cruelly  than  they  sounded.  Moreover, 
it  would  not  be  at  all  difficult  to  chronicle 
example  after  example  of  deeds  of  sacrificing 
kindness  on  the  part  of  the  sharp-tongued 
Scotchman.  In  his  last  years  the  larger  part 
of  his  income  was  consumed  by  his  deeds  of 
charity.  He  has  written  certain  passages  which 
for  their  sheer  humanity  are  unsurpassed  in 
the  literature  of  any  people. 

In  Sartor  Resartus  he  says:  "Poor  wander 
ing,  wayward  man!  Art  thou  not  tried,  and 
beaten  with  stripes,  even  as  I  am?  Ever, 
whether  thou  bear  the  royal  mantle  or  the 
beggars  gabardine,  art  thou  not  so  weary,  so 
heavy  laden;  and  thy  Bed  of  Rest  is  but  a 
Grave.  O  my  Brother,  my  Brother,  why 
cannot  I  shelter  thee  in  my  bosom,  and  wipe 
away  all  tears  from  thy  eyes?"  Such  words 
are  not  written  by  stony-hearted  cynics.  An 
other  passage  which  could  have  been  sug 
gested  by  Millet's  "Man  With  the  Hoe"  reads: 
"Pity  him  too  the  Hard-handed,  with  bony 
brow,  rudely  combed  hair,  eyes  looking  out 
as  in  labor,  in  difficulty  and  uncertainty; 
Rude  mouth,  the  lips  coarse,  loose,  as  in  hard 
toil  and  lifelong  fatigue  they  have  got  the 
habit  of  hanging — hast  thou  seen  aught  more 
touching  than  the  rude  intelligence,  so  cramped, 


124       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

yet  energetic,  unsubduable,  true,  which  looks 
out  of  that  marred  visage?  Alas,  and  his  poor 
wife  with  her  own  hands,  washed  that  cotton 
neckcloth  for  him,  buttoned  that  coarse  shirt, 
sent  him  forth  creditably  trimmed  as  she 
could."  Here  there  is  anything  but  the  callous 
vapidity  which  sees  in  the  toiling  thousands 
naught  but  crude  material  for  cruder  ridicule. 
One  of  Carlyle's  most  beautiful  and  heart- 
thrilling  paragraphs  is  his  tribute  to  his  mother: 
"Your  poor  Tom  long  out  of  his  school  days 
has  fallen  very  tired  and  lame  and  broken  on 
this  pilgrimage  of  his,  and  you  cannot  help 
him  or  cheer  him  any  more;  but  still  from  your 
grave  in  Ecclefechan  churchyard  you  bid  him 
trust  in  God.  That  he  will  try  if  he  can  under 
stand  and  do."  According  to  his  own  theory, 
he  had  found  the  secret  of  knowledge.  In 
understanding  the  man  and  his  writings  this 
passage  is  considerable  help:  "One  grand,  in 
valuable  secret  there  is,  however,  which  in 
cludes  all  the  rest,  and,  what  is  comfortable, 
lies  clearly  in  every  man's  power:  To  have  an 
open,  loving  heart,  and  what  follows  from  the 
possession  of  such.  Truly  it  has  been  said, 
emphatically  in  these  days  ought  to  be  re 
peated,  a  loving  Heart  is  the  beginning  of  all 
Knowledge."  Carlyle  may  not  always  have 
kept  his  heart  open  to  new  light  and  truth, 


THOMAS  CARLYLE  125 

but  in  it  always  there  dwelt  the  spirit  of 
love. 

In  his  old  age  Carlyle  himself  stated  that 
he  regarded  truth  as  the  Alpha  and  Omega 
of  his  message.  Many  an  impetuous  charge 
did  he  make  against  the  citadels  of  falsehood. 
With  him  simple  honesty  was  the  crowning 
virtue.  In  speaking  of  his  books  he  says: 
"I've  had  but  one  thing  to  say  from  beginning 
to  end  of  them,  and  that  was,  that  there's 
no  other  reliance  for  this  world  or  any  other 
but  just  Truth,  and  that  if  men  did  not  want 
to  be  damned  to  all  eternity  they  had  best 
give  up  lying  and  all  kinds  of  falsehood.  That 
the  world  was  far  gone  already  through  lying, 
and  that  there's  no  hope  for  it  but  just  so  far 
as  men  find  out  and  believe  the  Truth  and 
match  their  lives  to  it.  But  on  the  whole, 
the  world  has  gone  on  lying  worse  than  ever." 
In  all  of  his  writings,  especially  in  Heroes  and 
Hero  Worship,  do  we  see  that  his  ultimate 
criterion  in  judging  men  is  sincerity.  He  tells 
that  Samuel  Johnson,  both  practically  and 
theoretically,  preached  this  great  gospel: 
*  'Clear  your  mind  of  Cant!'  Have  no  trade 
with  Cant:  stand  on  the  cold  mud  in  the  frosty 
weather,  but  let  it  be  in  your  own  real  torn 
shoes." 

It  goes  without  saying  that  the  generation 


126       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

of  Carlyle,  just  as  much  as  that  of  Johnson, 
needed  to  be  exhorted  to  avoid  cant  and  to 
stand  on  the  adamantine  basis  of  reality.  Is 
there  one  who  would  contend  that  such  teach 
ing  is  entirely  inapplicable  to  us  of  a  later  age? 
In  our  speech  how  easy  it  is  with  superficial 
fluency  parrotlike  to  rehash  the  ideas  and 
words  of  others.  Every  profession  has  its  own 
particular  brand  of  cant.  There  is  no  move 
ment  of  the  age  which  does  not  inspire  the 
eloquence  of  the  retailer  of  second-hand  verbi 
age.  It  is  easy  to  substitute  oracular  piety 
and  long-faced  religiosity  for  doing  justice, 
loving  mercy,  and  walking  humbly  with  God. 
Nothing  worth  attaining  is  ever  won  without 
a  Herculean  effort.  Strength  of  character  does 
not  fall  as  the  gentle  rain  from  heaven.  Sin 
cerity  is  the  corner  stone  of  real  probity,  but 
it  cannot  be  acquired  except  by  those  who 
struggle  to  obtain  it.  Old-fashioned  honesty, 
unswerving  loyalty  to  truth,  and  incorruptible 
integrity  are  qualities  which  cannot  loom  too 
large  in  any  life.  Sometimes  the  hardest  task 
which  confronts  an  individual  is  to  be  honest 
with  himself.  It  takes  more  than  mere  verbal 
sincerity  to  enable  a  man  to  look  the  facts 
of  life  straight  in  the  face.  To  acquire  the 
habit  in  the  name  of  a  silly  optimism  of  glossing 
over  the  disagreeable  phases  of  existence 


THOMAS  CARLYLE  127 

means,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  selling  of  one's 
soul  to  the  demons  of  falsehood.  And  it  is 
certain  that  the  man  who  has  given  days  and 
nights  to  the  study  of  the  writings  of  Thomas 
Carlyle  will  find  it  at  least  a  little  harder  to 
deviate  from  the  straight  and  narrow  path  of 
truth. 

In  Carlyle's  passionate  desire  for  reality  we 
find  the  key  to  his  theory  of  history  and  of 
life.  Early  in  his  career  he  set  forth  the  idea 
that  the  fundamental  task  of  the  writer  is  to 
perceive  and  set  forth  the  inexhaustible  mean 
ings  of  reality.  He  believed,  moreover,  that 
every  fact,  no  matter  how  significant  it  might 
appear,  had  latent  within  it  some  truth  of 
mighty  import  and  that,  above  all  else,  man 
is  called  to  be  loyal  to  fact.  Right  living  to 
him  meant  seeing  the  truth,  proclaiming  it, 
and  doing  it.  In  the  marvelous  pages  of  his 
essay  on  "Biography"  he  says:  "Sweep  away 
utterly  all  frothiness  and  falsehood  from  your 
heart;  struggle  unweariedly  to  acquire  what  is 
possible  in  every  God-created  man,  a  free, 
open,  humble  soul;  speak  not  at  all,  in  any 
wise,  till  you  have  somewhat  to  speak;  care 
not  for  the  reward  of  your  speaking;  then  be 
placed  in  what  section  of  Time  and  Space 
soever,  do  but  open  your  eyes,  and  they  shall 
actually  see,  and  bring  you  real  knowledge, 


128       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

wondrous  and  worthy  of  belief."  In  the 
same  article  he  gives  expression  to  another 
thought  which  cannot  but  have  the  ring  of 
inspiration  to  every  man  who  labors  for  human 
betterment:  "Can  we  change  but  one  single 
soap-lather  and  mountebank  Juggler  into  a 
true  Thinker  and  Doer,  who  even  tries  honestly 
to  think  and  do,  great  will  be  our  reward." 

This  is  what  Carlyle  for  more  than  half  a 
century  tried  to  do.  And  many  a  man  of 
light  and  leading  has  found  his  greatest  teacher 
in  the  sharp-tongued,  rugged  old  Scotchman, 
and  upon  the  pages  which  he  wrote  has  come 
into  contact  with  "truths  that  perish  never." 
Augustine  Birrell,  one  of  the  cleverest  of  con 
temporary  critics,  has  been  quoted  as  saying, 
"Young  man,  do  not  be  in  too  great  a  hurry 
to  leave  your  Carlyle  unread."  In  spite  of 
his  angularities  of  personality  and  his  pro 
found  errors  of  judgment,  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  few  indeed  are  the  men  of  modern  times 
who  have  meant  as  much  to  England  and 
mankind  as  this  Chelsea  "Isaiah  of  the  nine 
teenth  century." 


vm 

CROSS-EYED  SOULS 

RECENTLY  while  reading  a  story  in  one  of 
the  current  magazines  I  came  across  the  ex 
pressive  phrase  "cross-eyed  souls."  It  was 
used  to  describe  those  individuals  who  seem 
constitutionally  unable  to  face  the  facts  of  life 
honestly.  To  become  morally  cross-eyed  is 
comparatively  easy.  We  are  all  somewhat  in 
clined  to  see  things  as  we  want  to  see  them 
instead  of  seeing  them  as  they  are.  There 
are  times  when  it  takes  genuine  courage  to 
look  squarely  at  a  disagreeable  situation.  The 
man  who  tries  to  ignore  the  truth  sooner  or 
later  will  reach  a  place  where  he  cannot  dis 
tinguish  between  the  true  and  the  false.  Lies 
begin  at  home;  the  liar  first  deceives  himself. 
And  woe  to  that  man  who  has  so  abused  his 
gift  of  vision  that  he  cannot  tell  light  from 
darkness.  "If  thine  eye  be  full  of  darkness, 
thy  whole  body  is  full  of  darkness."  John 
Burroughs  has  written  an  essay  entitled 
"Straight  Seeing  and  Straight  Thinking." 

129 


130       JOHN  RTJSKIN,  PREACHER 

Straight  thinking  depends  upon  straight  see 
ing,  and  a  man  always  lives  as  he  thinks. 

Seeing  is  a  psychological  as  well  as  a  physio 
logical  process.  The  same  object  brings  de 
cidedly  different  pictures  to  different  minds. 
Two  men  enter  a  library.  One  sees  simply 
row  after  row  of  books,  while  the  heart  of  the 
other  leaps  within  him  as  he  recognizes  upon 
the  shelves  friends,  well  tried  and  true.  The 
geologist  can  read  the  history  of  prehistoric 
aeons  where  the  rest  of  us  see  nothing  but  a 
few  stones.  As  the  train  glides  over  the  moun 
tains,  glowing  with  the  ineffable  beauty  of  the 
dying  summer  day,  to  the  poet  the  autumn- 
tinted  hills  bring  visions  of  apocalyptic  splen 
dor,  but  the  gum-chewing,  vacuous- voiced  group 
across  the  aisle  behold  only  trees  and  rocks. 
To  some  the  sad-faced,  toil-worn  woman  as 
she  plods  wearily  along  is  only  another  unin 
teresting  member  of  the  human  race,  but 
those  who  can  really  see  read  upon  that  wrinkled 
face  "Sweet  records  promises  as  sweet." 

The  richness  and  the  fullness  of  our  lives  is  in 
proportion  to  our  power  to  see.  To  have  eyes 
and  to  see  not  is  to  live  a  half  life. 

John  Ruskin  has  written  these  ultraemphatic 
but  entirely  truthful  words:  "The  more  I 
think  of  it  the  more  I  find  this  conclusion 
impressed  upon  me,  that  the  greatest  thing  a 


CROSS-EYED  SOULS  131 

human  soul  ever  does  in  this  world  is  to  see 
something  and  tell  what  it  saw  in  a  plain  way, 
Hundreds  of  people  can  talk  for  one  who  can 
think,  but  thousands  can  think  for  one  who 
can  see."  Sometimes  the  eloquent  words  of 
Ruskin  are  almost  as  hopeless  as  the  waitings 
of  a  Cassandra  among  the  flames  of  Troy. 
But  whether  they  be  optimistic  or  pessimistic, 
facts  are  facts.  The  number  of  those  who 
positively  will  not  see  is  anything  but  small. 
There  is  no  royal  road  to  truth  of  any  kind. 
To  learn  really  to  see  is  not  the  easiest  of 
lessons.  Truth  can  be  attained  only  by  those 
who  dare  to  scale  the  cold  and  rugged  heights. 
It  is  easy  for  prejudice  or  selfishness  to  blind 
the  eye  of  man. 

Several  years  ago  a  newspaper,  in  chron 
icling  the  demise  of  one  who  had  taken  too 
much  opium,  appeared  with  an  article  headed, 
"Died  of  an  Overdose  of  Opinion."  Printer's 
errors  must  not,  of  course,  be  taken  too  seri 
ously.  But  if  "an  overdose  of  opinion"  were 
fatal,  many  of  us  who  are  to-day  in  the  land 
of  the  living  would  have  long  since  shuffled 
off  this  mortal  coil.  The  world  is  full  of  well- 
meaning  people  who  pronounce  offhand  judg 
ments  upon  the  gravest  and  most  complicated 
matters.  The  oracles  of  the  village  grocery 
and  barber  shop  are  most  militantly  cocksure 


132       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

in  regard  to  the  problems  of  labor  and  capital, 
the  management  of  armies  and  navies,  and 
the  conduct  of  government  at  home  and 
abroad.  There  are  those  who  read  nothing 
but  the  headlines  and  the  sporting  page,  who 
do  not  hesitate  to  discourse  learnedly  upon 
the  gravest  of  international  questions.  It  is 
the  immature  student  who  knows  the  most 
about  curriculums  and  discipline.  Ignorance  is 
always  dogmatic. 

The  truth-seeker  and  the  truth-finder  are 
always  openminded.  All  knowledge  which  man 
wins  is  a  revealer  of  new  fields  lying  in  the 
distance.  Books  which  in  other  years  were 
regarded  as  ultimate  wisdom  to-day  gather 
dust  upon  library  shelves.  In  many  fields 
of  intellectual  activity  the  more  light,  the 
less  certainty.  The  great  scholar  is  tolerant; 
the  unilluminated  grammarian  regards  the 
printed  word  of  the  pedant  as  final,  worthy 
to  be  written  upon  tables  of  stone.  Ignorance 
is  dogmatic  in  regard  to  its  own  viewpoint 
and  full  of  contemptuous  pity  for  all  who 
differ  with  it.  It  is  easy  to  have  essentially 
the  same  attitude  toward  life  as  the  old  lady 
who  in  a  discussion  of  church  unity  amiably 
remarked:  "What's  the  use  of  having  so  many 
denominations?  Why  can't  everybody  be 
sensible  and  be  a  Methodist?"  Dogmatism 


CROSS-EYED  SOULS  133 

means  intellectual  blindness.  Truth  cannot  be 
really  attained  by  those  who  view  it  from  only 
one  side.  "Dearly  beloved  brethren,"  ex 
postulated  Oliver  Cromwell  with  a  group  of 
dogmatic  clericals,  "I  beseech  you  by  the 
mercies  of  God  to  realize  that  you  may  be 
mistaken."  In  all  of  the  fields  of  human  en 
deavor  there  are  still  untold  mysteries.  We 
but  know  in  part.  We  see  only  through  a 
glass  darkly.  Absolute  knowledge  is  not  the 
portion  of  man.  In  the  presence  of  the  vast 
unknown  it  is  for  the  children  of  men  to  walk 
humbly  with  open  minds  and  receptive  hearts. 

Sometimes  there  is  a  great  gulf  fixed  between 
what  we  want  to  do  and  what  we  ought  to  do. 
There  is  always  a  danger  of  our  substituting 
desire  for  duty.  We  are  tempted  even  to  allow 
our  inclinations  to  mold  our  principles.  When 
we  do  wrong  our  tendency  is  to  make  excuses. 
Therefore  we  are  prone  to  adapt  our  ethics 
to  our  deeds.  But  there  is  always  hope  for 
an  honest  man.  No  matter  how  many  mis 
takes  one  has  made,  if  he  is  sincere  enough 
and  brave  enough  to  acknowledge  his  errors, 
he  has  not  entirely  lost  the  right  path. 

The  degeneration  of  a  soul  is  the  most 
gripping  and  heartrending  of  human  tragedies. 
Spiritual  disaster  comes  not  in  an  hour.  In 
the  West  Indies  there  is  an  insect  which  eats 


134       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

out  the  heart  of  a  pillar  while  it  is  to  all  appear 
ances  sound.  Tampering  with  one's  loyalty 
to  truth  has  a  subtle  but  certain  disintegrating 
influence  upon  the  character  and  personality. 
It  may  be  that  in  a  moment  of  unguarded 
weakness  sin  enters  a  life.  But  God  is  ever 
merciful;  the  door  of  the  Father's  house  is 
never  closed  to  the  poor  prodigal.  Yet  the 
man  who  in  order  to  justify  his  wrongdoings 
refuses  to  acknowledge  them  to  be  sins,  closes 
the  door  of  hope  upon  himself.  The  prodigal 
who  makes  himself  believe  that  the  licentious 
life  of  the  far  country  is  manly  and  honorable 
journeys  farther  and  farther  from  the  lights 
of  home. 

Oscar  Wilde,  a  man  from  whose  life  others 
walked  backward  with  averted  gaze,  once 
said,  "I  remember  when  I  was  at  Oxford  say 
ing  to  one  of  my  friends  as  we  were  strolling 
around  Magdalen's  narrow,  bird-haunted  walks 
one  morning  in  the  year  before  I  took  my 
degree,  that  I  wanted  to  eat  of  the  fruit  of  all 
the  trees  in  the  garden  of  the  world  and,  that 
I  was  going  out  into  the  world  with  that  pas 
sion  in  my  soul."  Wilde  tried  to  justify  his 
sin  by  giving  expression  to  a  noxious,  mephitic 
philosophy  of  life.  But  sin  is  sin  and  cannot 
be  purified  by  paragraphs  of  vapid,  high- 
sounding  words. 


CROSS-EYED  SOULS  135 

"If  you  must,  be  a  pig 

In  and  out  of  season, 
But  do  not  justify  it  with  a  big 
Philosophic  reason." 

Cut  in  the  stone  above  the  chancel  in  the 
chapel  of  one  of  the  historic  American  pre 
paratory  schools,  in  the  words  of  the  heroic 
Apostle  to  the  Gentiles  is  the  motto  of  the 
institution,  "Whatsoever  things  are  true."  A 
life  philosophy  built  around  these  words  will 
always  ring  true.  Emerson  said,  "The  world 
is  upheld  by  the  veracity  of  good  men;  they 
make  the  earth  wholesome."  The  materialism 
of  which  Thomas  Henry  Huxley  was  the  chief 
protagonist  is  to-day  without  defenders.  But 
Huxley  himself  is  still  a  potent  influence.  His 
life,  written  by  his  son,  is  a  biography  which 
no  alert,  idealistic  youth  can  afford  to  leave 
unread.  The  tremendous  influence  of  this 
Victorian  scientist  is  due  to  his  unswerving 
devotion  to  truth.  His  son  and  biographer 
writes,  "If  wife  and  child,"  he  said,  "were 
all  lost  to  me,  one  after  another,  I  would 
not  lie." 

A  number  of  years  ago  the  editor  of  a  great 
American  newspaper  was  in  Paris.  The  ques 
tion  arose  as  to  whether  the  paper  should  join 
the  party  with  which  it  was  allied  in  support 
ing  a  policy  which  this  publication  had  for 


136       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

years  opposed.  To  break  with,  the  party  meant 
loss,  perhaps  bankruptcy.  A  cable  was  sent 
to  the  old  chief  in  Paris.  Without  delay  came 
the  answer,  "Never  compromise  with  dis 
honor."  Faithfulness  to  truth  in  the  abstract 
is  easy,  but  a  man  is  to  be  measured  by  his 
attitude  toward  the  concrete  problems  which 
he  is  called  to  face.  Tampering  with  facts  in 
order  to  make  a  case  is  sinning  against  one's 
soul.  Truth  must  not  be  roughly  handled. 
To  see  the  truth,  to  speak  it,  and  to  act  it 
with  constancy  and  precision  is  one  of  the 
world's  most  difficult  tasks.  To  gloss  over 
realities  in  the  name  of  a  silly  optimism  is  to 
sell  the  soul  to  the  demons  of  falsehood.  It 
is  not  a  virtue  to  call  black  white.  In  one  of 
Ruskin's  noblest  passages  we  read:  "I  do  not 
mean  to  diminish  the  blame  of  the  injurious 
and  malicious  sin  of  the  selfish  and  deliberate 
falsity;  yet  it  seems  to  me  that  the  shortest 
way  to  check  the  darker  forms  of  deceit  is  to 
set  more  scrupulous  watch  against  those  which 
have  mingled,  unregarded  and  unchastised, 
with  the  current  of  our  life.  Do  not  let  us 
lie  at  all.  Do  not  think  of  one  falsity  as  harm 
less,  and  another  as  slight,  and  another  as 
unintended.  Cast  them  all  aside;  they  may  be 
light  and  accidental;  but  they  are  an  ugly 
soot  from  the  smoke  of  the  pit  for  all  that; 


CROSS-EYED  SOULS  137 

and  it  is  better  that  our  hearts  should  be  swept 
clean  of  them,  without  ever  caring  as  to  which 
is  the  largest  or  blackest." 

We  can  never  afford  to  sacrifice  principle  to 
expediency.  Disloyalty  to  truth  opens  the  door 
for  other  sins.  Each  falsehood  begets  many 
of  its  species.  A  nameless  individual  in  trying 
to  justify  certain  questionable  practices  to 
Samuel  Johnson  said,  "A  man  must  live." 
"I  don't  see  the  necessity,"  blurted  out  the 
sturdy  old  philosopher.  The  psalmist  says, 
"The  heathen  are  sunk  down  in  the  pit  they 
made;  in  the  net  which  they  hid  is  their  own 
foot  taken."  He  who  for  any  reason  what 
soever  ignores  the  truth,  digs  a  pit  into  which 
he  himself  is  doomed  to  fall  sooner  or  later; 
he  hides  a  net  in  which  his  own  feet  eventually 
become  enmeshed.  Horace  Bushnell's  sermons 
mostly  have  epigrammatic  titles  which  suggest 
their  central  thought.  One  bears  the  caption, 
"The  Capacity  for  Religion  Extirpated  by 
Disuse."  It  is  true  in  general  that  any  power 
which  is  not  used  atrophies.  "That  which  is 
not  expressed  dies."  The  time  comes  when  he 
who  will  not  see  cannot  see. 

As  the  years  take  us  farther  away  from  the 
nineteenth  century  we  are  able  to  discern  that 
among  its  other  outstanding  contributions  to 
the  world  of  thought  must  be  numbered  its 


138       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

bringing  to  the  service  of  education,  industry, 
and  government  that  temper  of  mind  which 
is  known  as  scientific.  It  is  entirely  probable 
that  the  scientific  spirit  as  applied  by  intel 
lectual  neophytes  to  philosophy  and  literature 
has  been  to  a  degree  responsible  for  the  arrant 
foolishness  of  those  who  have  tried  to  me- 
chanicalize  the  spiritual.  But  above  all  else 
it  stands  for  a  passion  for  truth.  In  a  college 
classroom  where  a  student  in  attempting  to 
translate  from  a  continental  language  into 
English  had  on  account  of  a  ludicrous  error 
become  the  object  of  the  derisive  laughter  of 
the  class,  the  professor  remarked,  "A  guess 
is  a  good  thing,  provided  we  guess  right." 
But,  as  a  general  rule,  good  guessing  is  based 
on  knowledge.  No  flight  of  the  imagination 
can  take  the  place  of  a  grasp  of  facts.  The 
scientific  temper  means  a  love  of  truth  and  a 
hatred  of  falsehood.  It  means  a  willingness 
to  face  realities  whether  or  not  they  accord 
with  our  prejudices  or  our  interests. 

Amiel  has  made  the  striking  statement  that 
"The  number  of  beings  who  wish  to  see  truly 
is  extraordinarily  small."  Whether  this  is  an 
exaggeration  or  not,  it  is  certainly  true  that 
no  one  ever  sees  clearly  without  wishing  to  see 
clearly.  It  is  easy  to  quote  Burns's  rollicking 
lines: 


CROSS-EYED  SOULS  139 

"O  wad  some  power  the  gif  tie  gie  us 
To  see  oursel's  as  others  see  us! 
It  wad  frae  monie  a  blunder  free  us, 
And  foolish  notion." 

It  may  be,  however,  that  others  do  not  see  us 
exactly  as  we  are.  Dr.  Holmes,  in  the  guise  of 
the  autocrat,  showed  how  one  of  his  table 
companions,  "a  young  fellow  answering  to  the 
name  of  John,"  had  three  distinct  personalities: 

THREE  JOHNS 

1.  The  real  John;  known  only  to  his  Maker. 

2.  John's  ideal  John;  never  the  real  one  and  often  very 
unlike  him. 

3.  Thomas's   ideal   John;   never   the   real   John,   nor 
John's  John,  but  very  often  unlike  either. 

The  result  of  learning  to  know  our  real 
selves  might  not  always  be  to  the  highest 
degree  flattering.  But  without  self-knowledge 
there  can  be  no  growth.  A  self -revealing  mis 
take  may  be  a  powerful  incentive  to  progress. 
He  who  dares  to  know  the  truth  walks  in  the 
light.  A  zeal  for  doing  which  is  not  allied 
with  a  passion  for  knowing  is,  to  say  the  least, 
fraught  with  grave  social  perils.  The  last 
words  of  Goethe  were,  "Light!  more  light!" 
In  an  age  of  new  problems,  of  industrial,  polit 
ical,  and  social  chaos,  when  with  phenomenal 
rapidity  the  old  order  yields  place  to  the  new, 


140      JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

when  we  know  not  whither  the  tides  of  life 
are  hurling  us,  the  outstanding  need  of  our 
generation  is  a  clear  and  broad  vision  of  the 
fundamental  verities.  The  knowing  of  the 
truth  is  not  always  inevitably  followed  by  the 
doing  of  the  right.  But  without  a  firm  grasp 
of  essential  truth  there  can  be  no  progress, 
either  individual  or  social.  The  first  and  great 
est  service  that  a  human  being  can  render  to 
society  is  to  be  wholeheartedly  honest  with 
himself. 


IX 

THE  AMERICAN  HERITAGE 

RACIALLY  we  Americans  are  a  cosmopolitan 
people,  but  our  spiritual  heritage  is  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  lineage.  It  has  come  to  us  through  the 
men  who  upon  the  rock-bound  coast  of  New 
England  and  by  the  sloping  banks  of  the  rivers 
of  old  Virginia  laid  the  foundations  of  future 
States.  From  the  very  first  the  gates  of  this 
new  land  "beyond  the  ocean  bars"  have  been 
open  to  all  light-seeking,  truth-loving  sons  of 
men.  The  thirteen  colonies  long  before  the 
Revolution  were  inhabited  by  men  and  women 
of  more  than  one  race.  In  New  York  were 
the  sturdy  descendants  of  the  unconquerable 
men  of  Holland,  than  whom  no  race  has  fought 
nobler  battles  for  human  liberty.  In  New 
Jersey  and  in  Delaware  were  those  who  in 
memory  still  climbed  the  snowy  hills  of  Sweden 
and  heard  her  Sabbath  bells.  In  the  South, 
and  even  among  the  Puritans  of  New  England, 
dwelt  those  of  French  names  in  whose  veins 
coursed  the  blood  of  the  Huguenots,  who 

141 


142       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

for  the  sake  of  their  fathers'   faith,   became 
fugitives  and  wanderers  upon  the  face  of  the 
earth.    In  the  Quaker  Commonwealth  of  Wil 
liam  Penn,  along  with  the  peaceful  Friend  from 
English  hedgerows  and  green  Irish  meadows, 
there  dwelt  men  of  Teutonic  blood  from  the 
legend-haunted  valley  of  the  Rhine  and  the 
snowy   peaks   and   hoary   glaciers  of   liberty- 
loving   Switzerland.      And    there   too   glowed 
the  fire  of  Celtic  hearts.     In  more  than  one 
sequestered  vale  even  to-day  the  old   Welsh 
names  tell  of  those  of  the  faith  of  Pennsylvania's 
founder  who  brought  with  them  to  the  American 
wilderness   the   tradition   of   the   storied   hills 
and  rugged  mountains  of  little  Wales.     And 
beyond  the  blue  ridges  of  the  Alleghanies  the 
militant  dauntless  Ulster  Scot  faced  the  ter 
rors  of  the  wilderness  and  led  the  westward 
march  of  empire.     No  part  of  these  United 
States  can  trace  its  ancestry  to  one  race  alone. 
Neither  are  we  a  mere  conglomerate  of  many 
races.     We   are   a   new   people — not   English, 
nor    Irish,    nor    German,    nor    French,    but 
Americans. 

In  Bayard  Taylor's  "National  Ode,"  read 
upon  Independence  Square,  Philadelphia,  July 
4,  1876,  just  once  does  the  poet  rise  to  the 
level  of  the  momentous  day  and  the  memorable 
occasion.  In  speaking  of  his  country  he  said: 


THE  AMERICAN  HERITAGE      143 

"No  blood  in  her  lightest  veins 
Frets  at  remembered  chains, 
No  shame  nor  bondage  has  bowed  her  head. 
In  her  form  and  features  still 
The  unblenching  Puritan  will, 
Cavalier  honor,  Huguenot  grave, 
The  Quaker  truth  and  sweetness, 
And  the  strength  of  the  danger-girdled  race 
Of  Holland,  blend  in  a  proud  completeness. 
From  the  homes  of  all,  where  her  being  began. 

Her  Germany  dwells  by  a  gentler  Rhine; 

Her  Ireland  sees  the  old  sunburst  shine; 

Her  France  pursues  some  dream  divine; 

Her  Norway  keeps  his  mountain  pine; 

Her  Italy  waits  by  the  western  brine; 

And  broad-based  under  all 

Is  planted  England's  oaken-hearted  mood, 

As  rich  in  fortitude 

As  e'er  went  worldward  from  the  island- wall! 

Fused  in  her  candid  light, 

To  one  strong  race  all  races  here  unite." 

Here  the  poet,  in  language  succinct  and  beau 
tiful,  gives  expression  to  a  fundamental  fact 
of  our  national  life.  We  are  of  many  extrac 
tions,  but  "one  people  with  one  language, 
the  English  language,  and  one  flag,  the  Amer 
ican  flag."  Many  tributaries  have  flowed  into 
the  river  of  our  American  thought  and  ideals, 
but  its  source  is  unmistakably  English.  What 
ever  our  race  or  sign,  we  are  fundamentally 
Anglo-Saxon. 


144       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

We  are  heirs  of  the  "great  tradition"  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  line.  It  was  for  us  that  the 
sturdy  barons  at  Runnymede  wrested  the  Great 
Charter  from  a  weak-kneed  tyrant.  It  was 
for  us  that  Cromwell  and  his  Ironsides  waged 
heroic  warfare  at  Naseby  and  Marston  Moor. 
It  was  for  us  that  Burke  in  winged  words 
uttered  his  burningly  eloquent  defense  of  the 
ancient  English  liberties.  It  was  to  protect 
these  selfsame  inalienable  rights  that  American 
yeomen  laid  down  their  lives  at  Bunker  Hill 
and  Brandywine.  But  our  political  heritage  is 
but  a  slender  portion  of  the  priceless  inheritance 
which  has  come  to  us  from  beneath  the  somber 
skies  of  Old  England. 

To  be  thankful  that  the  English  language  is 
our  language  indicates  no  spirit  of  provincial 
narrowness.  So  indissolubly  is  our  speech 
united  with  the  best  in  our  national  life  that 
he  whose  inner  life  is  most  adequately  ex 
pressed  in  another  language  and  speaks  in  a 
foreign  tongue  and  glorifies  it  at  the  expense 
of  our  national  vernacular  is  fundamentally  a 
foreigner.  One  lesson  of  the  war  which  cannot 
be  ignored  is  that  the  easier  we  make  it  for 
new  citizens  to  retain  the  dialects  and  lan 
guages  of  lands  across  the  water,  the  harder 
will  be  the  task  of  Americanization.  To  have 
for  our  national  speech  the  language  whose 


THE  AMERICAN  HERITAGE      145 

line  has  gone  out  to  the  uttermost  parts  of  the 
earth,  which  to-day  comes  the  nearest  to  be 
ing  really  a  world  language,  is  not  the  least 
of  our  national  blessings.  And  through  our 
linguistic  heritage  our  soul  lives  are  deepened 
and  broadened  by  contact  with  the  noblest 
body  of  literature  ever  produced  by  any  people 
in  the  annals  of  the  human  race.  In  speech 
at  least  Chaucer,  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Words 
worth,  Tennyson,  and  Browning  are  of  us. 
This  kinship  in  the  starlit  realms  of  literature 
with  those  who  until  the  latest  days  will 
tower  like  sunken  continents  above  oblivion's 
sea  has  in  it  something  which  should  cast  at 
least  a  faint  "gleam"  upon  the  barren  fields 
of  the  most  sordid  and  commonplace  day. 

Mighty  as  may  be  the  appeal  to  the  Amer 
ican  heart  of  the  supreme  literature  of  the 
seagirt  motherland,  it  is  in  the  literary  work 
of  our  own  country  that  we  find  most  clearly 
reflected  our  national  life  and  ideals.  Some 
times  a  poet  or  novelist  brings  us  far  nearer 
to  the  heart  of  reality  than  the  historian  or 
philosopher.  It  is  futile  to  discuss  the  silly 
academic  question  as  to  whether  or  not  there  is  a 
distinctive  American  literature.  The  flowers  of 
prose  and  poetry  which  have  sprung  from 
American  soil  are  American  and  nothing  else. 
In  the  literature  of  our  nation  we  find  mir- 


146       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

rored  forth  our  history  and  our  outstanding 
characteristics. 

What  are  the  qualities  of  mind  and  heart 
which  differentiate  Americans  from  other  races 
of  the  human  species?  In  the  make-up  of 
the  "cosmopolitanly  planned"  citizen  of  this 
great  new  land  are  there  ingredients  which  are 
new  under  the  sun,  or  do  we  represent  a  new 
combination  of  human  traits  as  old  as  the 
world?  It  does  not  take  a  vast  amount  of 
thinking  to  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
latter  question  is  the  one  which  compels  an 
affirmative  answer.  A  great  seer  once  said, 
"Mankind  progresses;  man  ever  remains  the 
same."  But  it  is  worth  while  to  notice  a  few 
of  those  elements  of  human  nature  which  loom 
largest  in  the  American  mind  and  character. 

1.  The  real  American  is  democratic.  He 
rates  a  man  according  to  his  own  merits  rather 
than  upon  the  height  of  his  family  tree.  He 
believes  that  there  is  a  real  greatness  latent  in 
the  commonest  of  the  children  of  men.  With 
Burns  he  says: 

"The  rank  is  but  the  guinea's  stamp, 
The  man's  the  gowd  for  a'  that." 

It  must,  of  course,  be  admitted  that  there  are 
within  the  borders  of  these  United  States 
some  representatives  of  that  species  which 


THE  AMERICAN  HERITAGE      147 

Thackeray  excoriated  under  the  name  of  snob. 
But  the  would-be  aristocrat  and  the  real 
American  can  never  dwell  in  the  same  tene 
ment  of  clay.  The  American  is  open,  frank, 
and  free,  both  approaching  and  approachable. 
It  has  been  said  that  the  English  people  are 
like  their  own  ale,  "froth  on  top,  dregs  at  the 
bottom,  but  sound  in  the  middle."  This 
description  is  by  no  means  inapplicable  to 
our  own  people.  It  must,  moreover,  be  re 
membered  that  the  froth  of  humanity  is  just 
as  worthless  as  the  dregs.  Among  the  froth 
of  American  life  there  are  arrant  snobs,  and 
at  the  bottom  we  find  the  braying  Bolshevist. 
But  between  these  two  extremes  are  solidity, 
strength,  and  real  democracy.  We  can  judge 
a  people  by  their  national  heroes.  Abraham 
Lincoln,  who,  as  the  years  go  by,  is  being 
more  and  more  legendized  and  idealized,  was 
simply  "one  of  the  folks."  The  plain  frame 
house  in  Springfield  which  he  left  for  the 
White  House  was  a  simple,  typical  American 
home.  He  was  too  big  a  man  to  have  any 
place  in  his  make-up  for  superficial,  adventitious 
standards  of  judging  his  fellow  men.  And 
this  characteristic  of  Lincoln  is  one  of  the 
distinctive  marks  of  Americanism.  In  his 
outstanding  essay  on  "Democracy,"  Lowell 
says  that  the  democratic  method  is  "such  an 


148       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

organization  of  society  as  will  enable  men  to 
respect  themselves." 

It  must  be  remembered  that  nowhere  else 
do  we  come  into  such  vital  touch  with  the 
life  of  a  people  as  upon  the  pages  of  their 
literature.  There  is  a  profound  significance  in 
the  fact  that  our  American  literature  is  essen 
tially  democratic.  It  is  true  that  there  is  an 
element  of  insularity  in  the  literature  of  the 
New  England  renaissance.  For  some  of  the 
writers  of  that  period  Boston  was  verily  "the 
hub  of  the  solar  system."  But  Longfellow, 
saturated  as  he  was  with  the  culture  of  the 
Old  World,  sang  of  the  natural  sorrows,  losses, 
and  joys  which  go  to  make  up  the  common 
life  of  everyday  men  and  women.  Emerson 
stands  out  with  translucent  clearness  as  the 
great  interpreter  of  our  national  democracy. 
He  was  limited  in  powers  of  human  contact 
but  catholic  in  his  sympathy.  In  the  literature 
of  the  older  day  the  only  place  in  which  we 
find  the  democratic  spirit  lacking  is  in  the 
writings  of  Dr.  Holmes.  No  poetry  is  more 
distinctively  American  than  that  of  Whittier, 
who  wrote  about  common  people  for  common 
people.  Our  American  writers  have  not  dealt 
with  kings  and  barons,  legendary  or  real. 
Upon  their  pages  we  do  not  come  into  contact 
with  supermen  or  titanic  amazons,  but  with 


THE  AMERICAN  HERITAGE      149 

men  and  women  to  whom  we  are  drawn  as  it 
were  by  cords  invisible  because  they  are  de 
lightfully  human.  And  the  same  note  of  sin 
cere  democracy  is  sounded  in  the  most  dis 
tinctive  writings  of  our  own  day.  As  we  travel 
"North  of  Boston"  with  Robert  Frost  "Old 
hearths  grow  wide  to  make  us  room"  as  truly 
as  did  the  old  fireplace  in  the  Whittier  kitchen 
at  Haverhill.  In  Masters  and  Sandburg  we 
feel  the  mighty  pulsations  of  the  broad,  free 
Middle  West  without  knowing  which  no  man 
can  know  America.  It  is  not  at  all  certain 
that  when  the  mists  of  the  present  have  rolled 
away  we  shall  not  come  to  see  that  in 
the  writings  of  Walt  Whitman,  Mark  Twain, 
and  William  Dean  Howells  we  get  nearer  to 
the  heart  of  American  life  than  in  any  history 
which  has  been  or  will  be  written.  Our  na 
tional  literature  is  redolent  of  green  meadows 
and  running  brooks,  of  broad  fields,  of  tree- 
embowered  villages  and  the  thronging  streets  of 
the  busy  city.  Everywhere  it  is  permeated 
with  "the  folksiness  of  the  folks."  American 
literature  is  democratic  because  American  life 
is  democratic. 

2.  Americans  are  a  practical,  achieving  peo 
ple.  Our  feet  are  always  on  the  ground.  By 
their  fruits  we  judge  them.  We  believe  in  "The 
nobility  of  labor — the  long  pedigree  of  toil." 


150       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

The  Rooseveltian  doctrine  that  idleness  is 
criminality  is  a  thought  near  the  center  of  the 
typical  American  philosophy  of  life.  Walt 
Whitman  in  "I  hear  America  singing"  images 
the  poetry  of  common  toil: 

"The  shoemaker  singing  as  he  sits  at  his  bench, 
The  hatter  singing  as  he  stands, 

The  delicious  singing  of  the  mother  or  of  the  young  wife 
At  work,  or  the  girl  sewing  or  washing, 
Each  singing  what  belongs  to  him  or  her  and  to  none  else." 

Whittier's  "Songs  of  Labor"  gives  us  a  virile 
American  note  and  Dr.  Henry  van  Dyke  in 
his  "Toiling  of  Felix"  in  lines  of  gentle  beauty 
says1: 

"Blessed  are  they  that  labor,  for  Jesus  partakes  of  then- 
bread, 

He  puts  his  hand  to  their  burdens,  he  enters  their  homes 
at  night: 

Who  does  his  best  shall  have  as  his  guest,  the  Master 
of  life  and  light. 

"This  is  the  gospel  of  labor,  ring  it  ye  bells  of  the  kirk! 
The  Lord  of  Love  came  down  from  above,  to  live  with 

the  men  who  work. 
This  is  the  rose  that  he  planted,  here  in  the  thorn-curst 

soil; 
Heaven  is  blest  with  perfect  rest,  but  the  blessing  of 

earth  is  toil." 


1  Printed  by  permission  of  Charles  Scribner's  Sons,  Publishers. 


THE  AMERICAN  HERITAGE      151 

The  old  monk's  motto,  Laborare  est  orare,  does 
not    need    to    be    explained    to    the    typical 
American.      He   not   only   believes   it   but   he 
lives   it.     Our  religion   is   intensely   practical. 
The  mysticism  of  our  fathers  has  faded  into 
the  light  of  common  day.    Even  in  our  spiritual 
lives  we  have  become  somewhat  of  the  earth 
earthy.    Of  course  in  almost  every  community 
can  be  found  the  canting  hypocrite  who  sub 
stitutes  the  mechanical  performance  of  mechan 
ical  rites  for  doing  justice,  loving  mercy,  and 
walking   humbly    with   the    Master.      But   in 
general    the    efficacy    of    a    man's    religion   is 
measured  by  his  loyalty  to  duty  and  his  in 
tegrity   in  his   dealings   with  his  fellow  men. 
From  our  present-day  viewpoint  the  criterion 
of  the  effectiveness  of  anything  is  workability. 
We  have  no  time  for  theories.     We  minimize 
creeds.     We  are  too  practical  to  be  concerned 
with    the    fundamental.      Sometimes    we    are 
ready  to  start  on  a  journey  before  the  road 
is  built.     In  fact,  we  have  a  tendency  to  push 
right  on  without  bothering  to  inform  ourselves 
as  to  our  destination.     James  and  Dewey  with 
their    pragmatism    have    brought    philosophy 
from  the  clouds  to  the  world  of  men.     "If  it 
works,    it's    true."      "This,"    says   the   meta 
physician,   "is   not  philosophy.     It  is  but  a 
wild-goose   chase."     His   contention   may   be 


152       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

true.  But  somehow,  Professor  James  and 
his  followers  have  told  us  something  which  we 
have  all  vaguely  felt  before  anyone  brought 
it  to  the  surface  and  put  it  into  words.  At 
least  they  have  formulated  ideas  which  have 
long  been  in  the  atmosphere  of  our  land  and 
age. 

Our  practicality  naturally  has  the  defects 
of  its  qualities.  We  are  not  a  reverent  people. 
Nothing  upon  earth  or  in  the  heavens  above 
the  earth  or  in  the  waters  under  the  earth  is 
safe  from  the  jesting  Yankee.  Mark  Twain's 
lack  of  reverence  is  typically  American.  Then, 
too,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  our  practical 
ness  has  tended  to  make  us  materialistic. 
But  at  all  events  we  are  no  "idle  dreamers 
of  an  empty  day."  In  our  faith  there  is  no 
room  for  dead  scholasticism  or  barren  asceti 
cism.  And,  after  all,  we  are  by  no  means 
deaf  to  the  appeal  of  a  noble  idealism.  We 
insist,  however,  upon  our  ideals  being  trans 
lated  into  deeds.  We  are  not  satisfied  with 
perfect  theories  in  the  closet.  We  demand 
those  which  will  stand  the  test  of  the  market 
place.  Like  Bunyan's  hero,  "Life,  more  life!" 
is  our  cry. 

3.  The  American  is  an  instinctive  pioneer. 
Even  in  the  oldest  parts  of  our  country  we  are 
a  new  people,  the  children  of  immigrants. 


THE  AMERICAN  HERITAGE      153 

This  is  not  without  significance  in  the  study 
of  our  national  characteristics.  He  who  leaves 
the  home  of  his  fathers  for  a  new  land  is  mostly 
an  adventurous  soul,  who  longs  to  find  that 
which  is  "lost  behind  the  ranges."  The  his 
tory  of  the  three  centuries  of  life  upon  this 
continent  is  essentially  the  story  of  the  pioneer. 
The  conquest  of  the  land  between  ocean  and 
ocean  is  a  veritable  Odyssey  of  the  frontier. 
What  a  mighty  drama  of  history  is  compressed 
into  Walt  Whitman's  vivid  lines! — 

"All  the  past  we  leave  behind, 

We  debouch  upon  a  newer,  mightier  world,  varied  world, 
Fresh  and  strong  the  world  we  seize,  world  of  labor  and 
the  march, 
Pioneers!    Pioneers! 

"We  detachments  steady  throwing, 
Down  the  edges,  through  the  passes,  up  the  mountains 

steep, 

Conquering,  holding,  daring,  venturing  as  we  go  the 
unknown  ways, 
Pioneers!    Pioneers! 

"All  the  pulses  of  the  world, 

Falling  in  they  beat  for  us,  with  the  Westward  move 
ment  beat, 

Holding  single  or  together,  steady  moving  to  the  front, 
all  for  us, 

Pioneers!    Pioneers!" 

Roosevelt's  Winning  of  the  West,  Churchill's 
The  Crossing,  and  other  books  which  tell  of 


154       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

the  westward  march  of  Anglo-Saxon  civiliza 
tion  are  replete  with  tales  of  dauntless  hero 
ism.  America  has  always  faced  the  future. 

As  a  people  we  are  not  inclined  to  linger 
around  the  sunken  reefs  of  the  past.  Spir 
itually  as  well  as  physically  we  are  of  pioneer 
stock.  In  The  American  Scholar  Emerson 
says,  "The  eyes  of  a  man  are  set  in  his  fore 
head,  not  in  his  hindhead."  And  again:  "Our 
day  of  dependence,  our  long  apprenticeship  to 
the  learning  of  other  lands,  draws  to  a  close. 
The  millions  that  around  us  are  rushing  into 
life,  cannot  always  be  fed  upon  the  sere  re 
mains  of  foreign  harvests."  Emerson's  doc 
trine  of  self-reliance,  although  "sicklied  o'er" 
with  a  nebulous  Kantean  transcendentalism,  is 
intrinsically  American.  He  is  preeminently  the 
prophet  of  individualism.  "Trust  thyself,"  he 
says,  "every  heart  vibrates  to  that  iron  string." 
In  America  we  find  not  types  but  individuals. 
That  "goosestep  efficiency"  which  was  so  much 
vaunted  before  1914  was  always  a  plant  of 
slow  growth  upon  this  side  of  the  Atlantic. 

We  are  not  slavish  imitators  of  those  who 
have  gone  before,  although  it  cannot  be  said 
that  we  have  refused  to  avail  ourselves  of  the 
lessons  of  the  past.  The  windows  of  our  hearts 
and  minds  are  ever  open  to  new  light  and 
new  truth.  We  are  not  afraid  of  the  untrodden. 


THE  AMERICAN  HERITAGE      155 

pathway.  We  believe  that  a  man's  creed — 
political,  social,  or  religious — is  not  something 
that  can  be  slipped  on  or  off  like  a  raincoat. 
It  has  to  do  with  the  life  within.  It  cannot 
unchanged  be  transmitted  from  one  genera 
tion  to  another.  Possibly  there  is  no  Amer 
ican  poem  which  makes  a  wider  appeal  to 
the  idealism  of  college  students  than  Lowell's 
"The  Present  Crisis."  Never  does  a  year  pass 
without  its  being  quoted  many  times  in  some 
undergraduate  oration.  Lines  like  these  strike 
an  answering  chord  in  the  heart  of  the  twentieth 
century  college  boy: 

"Tis  as  easy  to  be  heroes  as  to  sit  the  idle  slaves 
Of  a  legendary  virtue  carved  upon  our  fathers'  graves, 
Worshipers  of  light  ancestral  make  the  present   light  a 

crime — 
Was  the  Mayflower  launched  by  cowards,  steered  by  men 

behind  their  time? 
Turn  those  tracks  toward  Past  or  Future,  that  make 

Plymouth  Rock  sublime? 

"New  occasions  teach  new  duties;  Time  makes  ancient 
good  uncouth; 

They  must  upward  still  and  onward,  who  would  keep 
abreast  of  Truth; 

Lo,  before  us  gleam  her  camp-fires!  We  ourselves  must 
Pilgrims  be, 

Launch  our  Mayflower,  and  steer  boldly  through  the 
desperate  winter  sea, 

Nor  attempt  the  Future's  portal  with  the  Past's  blood- 
rusted  key." 


156       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

In  such  words  the  American  speaks. 

4.  The  American  is  a  patriot.  When  he 
quotes  Daniel  Webster  and  says,  "I  was  born 
an  American;  I  will  live  an  American,  and  I 
will  die  an  American,"  he  is  not  uttering  mere 
words.  Edward  Everett  Hale's  little  story 
The  Man  Without  a  Country  expresses  an 
idea  which  is  deeply  rooted  in  our  national 
life.  It  is  seldom  indeed  that  a  citizen  of  the 
United  States  transfers  his  allegiance  to  any 
other  country.  There  may  be  a  scintilla  of 
truth  in  Samuel  Johnson's  definition  of  patriot 
ism  as  "the  last  refuge  of  a  scoundrel."  In 
speaking  of  his  country  it  is  easy  for  an  in 
sincere  man  eloquently  to  utter  labored 
nothings.  But  more  than  once  has  the  soul 
of  America  been  tried  in  the  grim  crucible 
of  war.  On  many  a  battle-torn  field  her  sons 
have  died  to  uphold  her  honor.  During  long 
years  of  peace  the  fires  of  patriotism  have 
brightly  burned  upon  our  national  altars.  It 
must,  however,  be  admitted  that  there  are  in 
America  those  whose  hearts  have  never  thrilled 
with  the  noble  emotion  which  we  call  "love 
of  country."  The  life-detached  intellectualist 
proudly  proclaims  himself  an  internationalist 
and  refers  to  love  of  one's  native  land  as 
"baby  patriotism."  A  large  section  of  the 
foreign-language  press  is  shadowed  with  an 


THE  AMERICAN  HERITAGE      157 

intangible  but  ever-present  hyphenism.  There 
are  American  citizens  of  foreign  birth  or 
immediate  descent  who  very  frequently,  for 
reasons  of  "loaves  and  fishes,"  make  systematic 
efforts  to  impede  the  Americanization  of  those 
to  whom  they  are  affiliated  by  race,  by  con 
ducting  propaganda  in  favor  of  foreign  lan 
guages  and  foreign  customs.  In  addition  we 
must  reckon  with  the  anti-social  teaching 
which  especially  since  the  war  has  been  dis 
seminated  throughout  the  country.  It  is  also 
apparent  that  in  those  magazines  which  to-day 
find  nothing  in  the  world  worthy  of  commenda 
tion  outside  of  Germany,  Bolshevist  Russia, 
and  Sinn-Fein  Ireland,  the  American  note  is 
very  conspicuous  by  its  absence.  But  in  spite 
of  these  obnoxious  manifestations  the  rank 
and  file  of  American  manhood  and  woman 
hood  in  the  truest  and  noblest  sense  of  the 
word  are  patriotic.  The  crowds  who  in  the 
summer  throng  into  the  Chautauqua  tents  in 
almost  every  town  and  village  have  no  toler 
ance  for  disloyalty  in  any  form.  The  noise 
which  hyphenism  makes  causes  us  to  over 
estimate  the  number  in  the  ranks  of  the  mal 
contents.  It  is  true  that  there  must  be  no 
compromise  with  this  type  of  dishonor,  that 
we  must  lose  no  opportunity  to  check  and 
counteract  poisonous  propaganda.  We  still, 


158       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

however,  can  quote  with  assurance  Long 
fellow's  lines  written  in  a  much  darker  hour 
than  the  present: 

"Thou,  too,  sail  on,  O  Ship  of  State! 
Sail  on,  O  UNION,  strong  and  great! 

Fear  not  each  sudden  sound  and  shock, 

'Tis  of  the  wave  and  not  the  rock; 

'Tis  but  the  flapping  of  the  sail, 

And  not  a  rent  made  by  the  gale! 

In  spite  of  rock  and  tempest's  roar, 

In  spite  of  false  lights  on  the  shore, 

Sail  on,  nor  fear  to  breast  the  sea! 

Our  hearts,  our  hopes  are  all  with  thee, 

Our  hearts,  our  hopes,  our  prayers,  our  tears, 

Our  faith  triumphant  o'er  our  fears, 

Are  all  with  thee — are  all  with  thee!" 

5.  Idealism  is  a  dominant  American  charac 
teristic.  When  Arthur  Balfour  was  on  his 
visit  to  this  country  he  said,  "Because  America 
was  commercial  it  was  easy  to  suppose  that 
she  was  materialistic."  "We  are,"  ex-President 
Eliot,  of  Harvard,  says,  "the  most  idealistic 
people  who  have  thus  far  inherited  the  planet. 
We  are  more  idealistic  in  our  conception  of 
man,  of  God,  and  of  the  universe  than  any 
other  people."  It  was  a  great  ideal  which 
sent  the  little  Mayflower  across  the  wintry 
sea.  Men  and  women  who  are  for  the  sake 
of  their  faith  willing  to  break  all  of  the  precious 


THE  AMERICAN  HERITAGE      159 

ties  uniting  them  to  the  land  of  their  fathers 
represent  the  quintessence  of  idealism.  The 
Pilgrim  Fathers  endured  as  seeing  Him  who 
is  invisible.  They  looked  beyond  the  transient 
to  the  eternal.  "Their  palaces  were  houses 
not  made  with  hands;  their  diadems  crowns 
of  glory  which  should  never  fade  away."  As 
Moses  Coit  Tyler  has  eloquently  told  us, 
before  the  stumps  were  brown  in  their  earliest 
harvest  field  or  the  wolves  had  ceased  to  howl 
nightly  around  their  habitation  they  founded 
schools  and  colleges.  In  speaking  of  the  first 
of  these  embryo  colleges  Dr.  Holmes  says: 

"And  when  at  length  the  College  rose, 

The  sachem  cocked  his  eye 
At  every  tutor's  meager  ribs 

Whose  coat-tails  whistled  by; 
But  when  the  Greek  and  Hebrew  words 

Came  tumbling  from  his  jaws, 
The  copper-colored  children  all 

Ran  screaming  to  the  squaws. 

"And  who  was  on  the  Catalogue 

When  College  was  begun? 
Two  nephews  of  the  President, 

And  the  Professor's  son; 
(They  turned  a  little  Indian  by, 

As  brown  as  any  bun;) 
Lord!  how  the  seniors  knocked  about 

The  freshman  class  of  one!" 


160       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

But  these  little  colleges  on  the  seaboard  were 
the  expression  of  the  same  dauntless  idealism 
which  brought  their  founders  across  the  sea. 
And  these  English  Dissenters  who  planted  on 
the  barren  New  England  the  seeds  of  a  new 
civilization  have  been  beyond  the  peradventure 
of  a  doubt  the  most  potent  factors  in  the 
spiritual  history  of  the  American  people. 

During  the  centuries  that  have  passed,  sons 
and  daughters  of  every  land  as  they  followed 
the  gleam  have  turned  their  steps  toward 
America,  the  land  of  the  ideal.  Americans  have 
never  failed  to  hear  the  call  of  heroic  service 
and  knightly  deeds.  We  as  a  people  have 
learned  that  man  does  not  live  by  bread  alone. 
There  have  been  times  in  American  history 
when  it  has  seemed  as  though  ideals  were 
upon  the  scaffold  and  materialism  upon  the 
throne.  That  period  of  American  history  be 
tween  Lincoln  and  Roosevelt  does  not  make 
especially  inspiring  reading.  The  sublime  ideal 
ism  which  manifested  itself  in  the  Civil  War 
reacted  into  sordidness  and  greed.  But  there 
never  has  been  a  time  of  no  vision.  Even 
days  of  darkness  are  illumined  by  some  of  the 
noblest  names  in  our  history.  It  is  not  with 
out  significance  that  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson, 
who  more  than  any  mirrored  forth  in  his 
writings  the  life  and  thought  of  the  first  cen- 


THE  AMERICAN  HERITAGE      161 

tury  of  our  national  existence,  was  preeminently 
an  idealist.  "Do  not,"  he  said,  "leave  the 
sky  out  of  your  landscape."  Another  daring 
figure  which  thrills  with  the  real  Emersonian 
idealism  is  the  of  ten- quoted  but  never  ithread- 
bare  aphorism,  "Hitch  your  wagon  to  a  star." 
We  are  the  sons  of  men  and  women  who 
cherished  ideals,  who  stood  for  the  purity  of 
the  home,  for  personal  integrity,  for  social 
helpfulness,  and  for  a  vital  sense  of  the  life 
of  God  in  the  soul  of  man.  We  belong  to  a 
generation  which  with  no  blot  of  selfishness 
upon  our  escutcheon  helped  to  wage  a  great 
war.  As  a  people  and  as  individuals  it  is  for 
us  to  conserve  our  honor,  truth,  and  righteous 
ness.  The  gleam  that  never  was  on  land  or 
sea  must  not  be  allowed  to  fade  into  the  light 
of  common  day. 

Olympus  cannot  be  crushed  into  a  [nut 
shell.  The  complex  life  of  over  a  hundred 
million  people  cannot  adequately  be  synthe 
sized  in  a  few  paragraphs.  Each  American 
is  not  like  every  other  American.  We  live  in 
the  land  of  magnificent  distances,  in  an  environ 
ment  which  develops  rather  than  represses 
individuality.  But  our  differences  are  more 
obvious  than  real.  Superficially  we  are 
heterogeneous,  but  fundamentally  we  are  alike. 
Beneath  the  surface  differences  and  the  in- 


162       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

evitable  distinctions  arising  from  varying  hered 
itary  and  environistic  influences  are  found  the 
traits  which  characterize  the  American.  As 
the  wheels  of  time  make  their  ceaseless  revolu 
tions  "The  thoughts  of  man  are  widened  with 
the  process  of  the  suns."  We  have  not  yet 
scaled  the  highest  mountain  nor  placed  our 
banner  upon  its  loftiest  peak.  We  must  not 
be  satisfied  with  the  virtues  of  our  fathers. 
The  American  of  to-morrow  must  be  bigger 
and  better  than  the  American  of  to-day. 

Every  experience  is  a  key  which  opens  the 
doors  of  life  to  newer  and  richer  experiences. 
We  stand  upon  the  shoulders  of  our  fathers. 
To  equal  them  we  must  surpass  them.  The 
problems  of  to-day  must  not  be  faced  in  any 
despicable  spirit  of  "after  us  the  deluge."  It 
is  for  us  to  pass  the  torch  of  idealism  from  the 
generations  which  have  come  and  gone  to 
those  which  are  yet  to  be. 


PERMANENT  VALUES  IN  THE 
BIGLOW  PAPERS 

IN  American  literature  in  the  field  of  satire 
we  have  nothing  better  to  show  than  Lowell's 
Biglow  Papers.  They  deal  with  the  living 
issues  of  a  vital  period  of  our  history.  The 
series  of  1846-1848  gave  expression  to  the 
deeply  rooted  opposition  which  existed  to  the 
Mexican  War  especially  in  New  England,  while 
that  of  1862-1868  naturally  reflects  the  tu 
multuous  days  of  the  Civil  War.  These  satires 
are  keen,  brilliant,  and  racy.  Hosea  Biglow, 
the  forthright,  hard-headed,  exuberantly  witty 
Yankee  philosopher,  is  in  himself  a  contribu 
tion  to  literature.  Above  all  else  the  Biglow 
Papers  are  American.  They  could  not  have 
been  written  outside  of  New  England.  They 
savor  not  of  the  library  but  of  the  soil.  Lowell 
knew  the  Yankee's  mind  as  well  as  his  dialect. 
It  is  not  hard  for  us  to  understand  the  popu 
larity  of  these  satires  with  the  generation  for 
whom  they  were  written.  But  taking  them 
in  their  entirety  they  are  not  especially  in 
spiring  to  the  reader  of  to-day.  It  is  hard  for 
163 


164       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

a  satire  to  win  immortality.  Most  of  us  have 
little  concern  with  the  political  quarrels  of  our 
grandfathers.  Few  care  to  lose  themselves  in 
the  intricacies  of  midnineteenth-century  pol 
itics.  Literary  material  weighted  down  with 
the  transient  is  not  interesting  to  posterity. 
The  perennial  interest  of  "The  Courtin'  "  is 
evidence  of  the  gulf  fixed  between  it  and  the 
work  as  a  whole. 

Yet,  buried  in  dialect  and  almost  entirely 
overwhelmed  by  comment  upon  forgotten  con 
troversies,  there  is  a  veritable  Golconda  of 
sparkling  wit  and  rugged  wisdom  hewn  from 
the  quarries  of  life.  The  underlying  thought 
of  the  poems  is  now  only  of  historic  interest. 
But  the  works  are  worth  reading  for  their 
by-products.  Shrewd,  aptly  phrased  epigrams, 
which  "Poor  Richard"  himself  might  have 
coined  are  to  be  found  on  many  otherwise 
tedious  pages.  And  here  the  student  of  Lowell 
comes  into  contact  with  truths  as  vital  and 
dynamic  to-day  as  when  they  first  came 
bounding  from  the  rapid  pen  of  the  poet. 

Words  which  have  to  do  with  loyalty  to 
principle  do  not  deal  with  any  evanescent 
theme.  More  than  one  pungent  stanza  in 
these  poems  satirizes  cant  and  insincerity. 
Lowell1  makes  the  self-seeking  politician  say: 

'The  selections  from  Lowell  are  used  by  permission  of    Houghton 
Mifflin  Company,  Publishers. 


THE  BIGLOW  PAPERS  165 

"I  du  believe  in  prayer  an'  praise 

To  him  thet  hez  the  grantin' 
O'  jobs — in  everythin'  that  pays, 

But  most  of  all  in  CANTIN'; 
This  doth  my  cup  with  marcies  fill, 

This  lays  all  thought  o'  sin  to  rest — 
I  don't  believe  in  princerple, 

But  oh,  I  du  in  interest." 

Again  we  read: 

"A  marciful  Providunce  fashioned  us  holler 
O'  purpose  thet  we  might  OUT  princerples  swaller; 
It  can  hold  any  quantity  on  'em,  the  belly  can, 
An'  bring  'em  ready  fer  use  like  the  pelican, 
Or  more  like  the  kangaroo,  who  (wich  is  stranger) 
Puts  her  family  into  her  pouch  wen  there's  danger. 
Ain't  princerple  precious?  then  who's  goin'  to  use  it 
Wen  there's  resk  o'  some  chap's  gittin  up  to  abuse  it? 
I  can't  tell  the  wy  on't,  but  nothin'  is  so  sure 
Ez  thet  princerple  kind  o'  gits  spiled  by  exposure." 

With  a  few  slight  changes  the  following  stanza 
would  suit  the  self-seeking  candidate  of  any 
time  or  place: 

"Ez  to  my  princerples,  I  glory 

In  hevin'  nothin'  o'  the  sort; 
I  ain't  a  Wig,  I  ain't  a  Tory, 

I'm  jest  a  canderdate,  in  short; 
Thet's  fair  an'  square  an'  parpendicler, 

But,  ef  the  Public  cares  a  fig 

To  have  me  an'  thin'  in  particler, 

Wy,  I'm  a  kind  o'  peri-Wig." 

It  is  also  true  that  in  some  respects  election 
to  Congress  has  about  the  same  influence 


166       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

upon  some  men  to-day  as  it  had  in  the  time 

of  Hosea  Biglow: 

"So,  wen  one's  chose  to  Congriss,  ez  soon  ez  he's  in  it, 
A  collar  goes  right  round  his  neck  in  a  minit, 
An'  sartin  it  is  thet  a  man  cannot  be  strict 
In  bein'  himself,  wen  he  gits  to  the  Deestrict, 
Fer  a  coat  thet  sets  wal  here  in  ole  Massachusetts, 
Wen  it  gits  on  to  Washinton,  somehow  askew  sets." 

Perhaps  the  most  contemptible  type  of 
hypocrite  is  the  individual  who  eloquently 
fulminates  against  wrong  in  general  and  skill 
fully  avoids  any  reference  to  specific  transgres 
sions  of  the  laws  of  right.  Some  one  has  given 
three  rules  which  are  to  be  followed  if  one  is 
to  avoid  making  enemies:  "Say  nothing,  do 
nothing,  be  nothing."  The  opponent  of  wrong 
in  the  abstract  follows  all  three  of  these  rules 
and  at  the  same  time  gulls  many  into  be 
lieving  him  to  be  a  valiant  soldier  in  the  army 
of  the  common  good.  Sometimes  the  most 
pusillanimous  coward  is  loudest  in  his  thunders 
against  remote  wrong  and  distant  sinners. 
Lowell  pays  his  respects  to  this  form  of  hypoc 
risy  in  these  lines  of  galling  satire: 

"I'm  willin'  a  man  should  go  tollable  strong 
Agin  wrong  in  the  abstract,  fer  thet  kind  o'  wrong 
Is  oilers  unpop'lar  an'  never  gits  pitied, 
Because  it's  a  crime  no  one  never  committed; 
But  he  mus'n't  be  hard  on  partickler  sins, 
Coz  then  he'll  be  kickin'  the  people's  own  shins." 


THE  BIGLOW  PAPERS  167 

Lowell  had  a  Carlylean  hatred  of  insincerity 
and  he  possessed  the  power  of  finding  the 
weak  places  in  the  armor  of  those  against 
whom  he  lifted  his  well-pointed  lance. 

Lowell's  satire  in  the  main  concerns  itself 
with  politics,  and,  like  much  political  writing, 
it  is  not  especially  characterized  by  fan-ness  to 
those  whom  it  criticizes.  There  are  passages 
which  impress  us  as  simply  shallow  cleverness. 
Satire,  nevertheless,  has  never  been  especially 
judicial.  It  is  somewhat  in  the  habit  of  taking 
sides.  It  was  an  utter  impossibility  for  a  red- 
blooded  man  like  James  Russell  Lowell  to  be 
a  colorless  neutral.  Right  or  wrong,  he  stood 
on  his  own  feet,  did  his  own  thinking,  and 
without  hesitation  or  equivocation  expressed 
his  opinions  in  language  which  could  not  be 
misunderstood. 

Lowell  owed  much  more  of  his  make-up  to 
his  mother,  who  was  of  an  old  Orkney  family 
and  a  descendant  of  the  ballad  hero,  Sir 
Patrick  Spens,  than  he  did  to  the  sturdy  New 
England  house  of  Lowell.  He  was,  nevertheless, 
highly  conscious  of  his  Puritan  heritage.  What 
ever  the  faults  of  the  Yankee  Ironsides,  they 
were  no  namby-pamby  weaklings.  They  were 
indeed  men  of  present  valor,  "stalwart  old 
iconoclasts."  This  characteristic  of  the  men 
who  in  New  England  and  America  struck 


168       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

sledge-hammer  blows  for  human  freedom  is 
set  forth  in  "Sunthin*  in  the  Pastoral  Line" 
in  the  portrait  of  Hosea's  "gret-gran'ther  mul 
tiplied  by  three."  Through  the  old  Crom- 
wellian,  Lowell  gives  expression  to  more  than 
one  sentiment  permeated  with  wisdom  and 
strength.  We  read,  for  example,  these  words: 

"  'Wai,  milk-an'-water  ain't  the  best  o'  glue,' 
Sez  he,  'an'  so  you'll  find  afore  you're  thru; 
Ef  rashness  venters  sunthin',  shilly-shally 
Loses  ez  often  wut's  ten  times  the  vally.' " 

And  again  in  the  same  poem  we  find  this  ring 
ing  exhortation: 

"  'Strike  soon,'  sez  he,  'or  you'll  be  deadly  ailin' — 
Folks  thet's  afeerd  to  fail  are  sure  o'  f ailin'; 
God  hates  your  sneakin'  creturs  thet  believe 
He'll  settle  things  they  run  away  an'  leave!'  " 

To  discuss  the  lasting  value  of  the  Biglow 
Papers  without  calling  attention  to  the  beau 
tiful  idyllic  passages  which  take  us  near  to 
the  very  heart  of  New  England  would  mean 
the  ignoring  of  some  of  the  most  charmingly 
realistic  pictures  of  rural  life  and  landscape 
to  be  found  anywhere,  except,  possibly,  upon 
the  pages  of  Whittier.  Again  "Sunthin'  in 
the  Pastoral  Line"  yields  rich  treasure.  For 
example: 


THE  BIGLOW  PAPERS  169 

"Jes*  so  our  spring  gits  everythin'  in  tune, 
An'  gives  one  leap  from  Aperl  into  June: 
Then  all  comes  crowdin'  in;  afore  you  think, 
Young  oak-leaves  mist  the  side-hill  woods  with  pink; 
The  catbird  hi  the  laylock-bush  is  loud; 
The  orchards  turn  to  heaps  o'  rosy  cloud; 
Red-cedars  blossom  tu,  though  few  folks  know  it, 
An'  look  all  dipt  in  sunshine  like  a  poet; 
The  lime-trees  pile  then*  solid  stacks  o'  shade 
An'  drows'ly  simmer  with  the  bees'  sweet  trade; 
In  ellum-shrouds  the  flashin'  hangbird  clings 
An'  for  the  summer  vy'ge  his  hammock  slings." 

"Mason  and  Slidell:  A  Yankee  Idyll"  con 
tains  a  vivid  picture  with  an  atmosphere  all 
its  own: 

"I  love  to  1'iter  there  while  night  grows  still, 
An'  in  the  twinklin'  villages  about, 
Fust  here,  then  there,  the  well-saved  lights  goes  out. 
An'  nary  sound  but  watchdog's  false  alarms, 
Or  muffled  cockcrows  from  the  drowsy  farms, 
Where  some  wise  rooster  (men  act  jest  thet  way) 
Stands  to  't  thet  moon-rise  is  the  break  o'  day." 

There  are  few  stanzas  with  more  poetry  to 
the  line  than  in  the  opening  words  of  "The 
Courtin'": 

"God  makes  sech  nights,  all  white  an*  still, 

Fur  'z  you  can  look  or  listen, 
Moonshine  an'  snow  on  field  an'  hill, 
All  silence  an'  all  glisten." 

In  the  apparently  inexhaustible  "Sunthin'  in 


170       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

the  Pastoral  Line"  there  is  another  stanza  of 
real  poetry  which  combines  humor,  suggestive- 
ness,  beauty,  and  inspiration: 

"'T  wuz  so  las'  Sabbath  arter  meetin'-time: 
Findin'  my  feelin's  wouldn't  noways  rhyme 
With  nobody's,  but  off  the  hendle  flew 
An'  took  things  from  an  east-wind  pint  o'  view, 
I  started  off  to  lose  me  in  the  hills 
Where  the  pines  be,  up  back  o'  'Siah's  Mills; 
Pines,  ef  you're  blue,  are  the  best  friends  I  know, 
They  mope  an'  sigh  an'  sheer  your  feelin's  so; 
They  hesh  the  ground  beneath  so,  tu,  I  swan, 
You  hah*  fergit  you've  gut  a  body  on. 
Ther  's  a  small  school'us  there  where  four  roads  meet, 
The  doorsteps  hollered  out  by  little  feet, 
An'  sideposts  carved  with  names  whose  owners  grew 
To  gret  men,  some  on  'em,  an'  deacons,  tu; 
't  ain't  used  no  longer,  coz  the  town  hez  gut 
A  high  school,  where  they  teach  the  Lord  knows  wut: 
Three-story  larnin'  's  pop'lar  now;  I  guess 
We  thriv'  'ez  wal  on  jes'  two  stories  less, 
Fur  it  strikes  me  ther  's  sech  a  thing  ez  sinnin' 
By  overloadin'  children's  underpinnin'; 
Wal,  here  it  wuz  I  lamed  my  ABC, 
An'  it's  a  kind  o'  favorite  spot  with  me." 

In  "A  Yankee  Idyll"  is  one  of  the  poet's 
most  vital  and  ringing  stanzas.  There  is 
something  wrong  with  the  American  who  can 
read  it  without  his  heart  beating  faster.  It  is 
an  Iliad  of  the  frontier,  an  Odyssey  of  the 
wilderness: 


THE  BIGLOW  PAPERS  171 

"O  strange  New  World,  thet  yit  wast  never  young, 
Whose  youth  from  thee  by  gripin'  need  was  wrung, 
Brown  foundlin'  o'  the  woods,  whose  baby  bed 
Was  prowled  roun'  by  the  Injun's  cracklin'  tread, 
An'  who  grew'st  strong  thru  shifts  an'  wants  an'  pains, 
Nussed  by  stern  men  with  empires  in  their  brains, 
Who  saw  in  vision  then*  young  Ishmel  strain 
With  each  hard  hand  a  vassal  ocean's  mane, 
Thou,  skilled  by  Freedom  an'  by  gret  events 
To  pitch  new  States  ez  Old- World  men  pitch  tents, 
Thou,  taught  by  Fate  to  know  Jehovah's  plan 
Thet  man's  devices  can't  unmake  a  man, 
An'  whose  free  latch-string  never  was  drawed  in 
Against  the  poorest  child  of  Adam's  kin — 
The  grave's  not  dug  where  traitor  hands  shall  lay 
In  fearful  haste  thy  murdered  corse  away." 

In  spite  of  parlor-anarchists,  hyphenates, 
Bolshevists,  and  other  traitors  these  last  lines 
may  still  be  read  with  confident  assurance. 

To-day,  better  than  we  could  a  few  years 
ago,  we  understand  the  tender  pathos  of  these 
lines  in  which  the  love  of  winter  beauty  is 
overshadowed  with  an  irrepressible  longing  for 
the  dear,  old,  far-off  days  of  peace: 

"Where's  Peace?    I  start,  some  clear-blown  night, 

When  gaunt  stone  walls  grow  numb  an'  number, 
An',  creakin'  'cross  the  snow-crus'  white, 

Walk  the  col'  starlight  into  summer; 
Up  grows  the  moon,  an'  swell  by  swell 
Thru  the  pale  pasture  silvers  dimmer 
Than  the  last  smile  thet  strives  to  tell 
O'  love  gone  heavenward  in  its  shimmer. 


172       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

"Snowflakes  come  whisper-in'  on  the  pane, 

The  charm  makes  blazin'  logs  so  pleasant, 
But  I  can't  hark  to  wut  they're  say'n', 
With  Grant  or  Sherman  oilers  present; 

"Or  up  the  slippery  knob  I  strain 

An'  see  a  hundred  hills  like  islan's 
Lift  their  blue  woods  in  broken  chain 

Out  o'  the  sea  o'  snowy  silence; 
The  farm-smokes,  sweetes'  sight  on  airth, 

Slow  thru  the  winter  air  a-shrinkin', 
Seem  kin'  o'  sad,  an'  roun'  the  hearth 

Of  empty  places  set  me  thinkin'." 

It  is  not  minimizing  Lowell  to  say  that  he  is 
by  no  means  one  of  the  great  figures  in  the 
world's  literature.  But  he  has  made  con 
tributions  to  our  American  letters  without 
which  we  would  be  immeasurably  poorer.  It 
can  also  be  said  of  him  that  no  other  writer 
has  written  in  dialect  lines  so  pathetically 
beautiful  and  enchantingly  melodious. 

But  some  of  the  pithiest  lines  in  the  two 
series  are  found  detached  from  any  other  out 
standing  thought  or  expression.  Consequently, 
many  of  them  are  all  but  lost  to  a  very  large 
proportion  of  modern  readers.  Yet  these 
scintillating  epigrams  are  replete  with  sug 
gestions  and  homely  common  sense.  Their 
name  is  legion,  and  the  examples  given  are 
typical  rather  than  inclusive: 


THE  BIGLOW  PAPERS  173 

"Democ'acy  gives  every  man 
The  right  to  be  his  own  oppressor." 

"My  gran'ther's  rule  was  safer'n  't  is  to  crow: 
Don't  never  prophesy — onless  ye  know." 

"(Why  I'd  give  more  for  one  bobolink 
Than  a  square  mile  o'  larks  in  printer's  ink.)" 

"Now  don't  go  off  half-cock;  folks  never  gains 
By  usin'  pepper-sarse  instid  o'  brains." 

"It's  no  use  buildin'  wut's  a-goin  to  fall." 

Here  are  two  lines  which  each  new  generation 
needs  to  remember: 

"Young  folks  are  smart,  but  all  ain't  good  thet's  new; 
I  guess  the  gran'thers  they  knowed  sunthin'  tu." 

Few  other  writers  could  have  expressed  the 
following  thought  without  falling  into  banality 
or  irreverence: 

"An'  you've  gut  to  git  up  airly 
Ef  you  want  to  take  in  God." 

In  one  of  his  satiric  congressional  Speeches 
two  thoughts  highly  worthy  of  quotation  are 
sententiously  expressed: 

"But  The'ry  is  jes'  like  a  train  on  the  rail, 
Thet,  weather  or  no,  puts  her  thru  without  fail, 
While  Fac's  the  old  stage  thet  gits  sloughed  in  the  rufcs, 
An'  hez  to  allow  for  your  darned  efs  an'  buts, 


174       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

An'  folks  don't  want  Fourth  o'  July  t'  interfere 
With  the  business  consarns  o'  the  rest  o'  the  year, 
No  more  'n  they  want  Sunday  to  pry  an'  to  peek 
Into  wut  they  are  doin'  the  rest  o'  the  week." 

It  would  be  hard  to  find  an  apter  comment 
upon  certain  phases  of  the  Puritan  character: 

"Pleasure  does  make  us  Yankees  kind  o'  winch, 
Ez  though  't  wuz  sunthin'  paid  for  by  the  inch; 
But  yit  we  du  contrive  to  worry  thru, 
Ef  Dooty  tells  us  thet  the  thing's  to  du, 
An  kerry  a  hollerday,  ef  we  set  out, 
Ez  stiddily  ez  though  't  wuz  a  redoubt." 

Hume  cynically  remarked  that  the  Puritans 
hated  bear-baiting  not  because  it  gave  pain 
to  the  bear,  but  because  it  gave  pleasure  to 
the  people.  This  falsehood  contained  just 
enough  truth  to  make  it  effective.  Lowell's 
lines  express  the  truth  of  the  aphorism  of  the 
Scottish  historian,  but  are  without  that  which 
made  Hume's  witticism  palpably  unjust.  More 
than  once  has  the  New  England  satirist  in  this 
fashion  packed  whole  chapters  of  social  psy 
chology  into  a  few  pregnant  sentences. 

Another  example   of   this  is    found  in   the 
following  lines  from  which  no  real  student  of 
humanity  will  think  of  dissenting: 
"An'  yit  I  love  th'  unhighschooled  way 

Ol'  farmers  hed  when  I  wuz  younger; 
Their  talk  wuz  meatier,  an'  'ould  stay 

While  book-froth  seems  to  wet  your  hunger; 


THE  BIGLOW  PAPERS  175 

For  puttin'  in  a  downright  lick 

'twixt  Humbug's  eyes  ther's  few  can  metch  it, 
An'  then  it  helves  my  thoughts  ez  slick 

Ez  stret-grained  hickory  doos  a  hetchet." 

In  speaking  of  the  Biglow  Papers  Charles 
Sumner  said,  "It's  a  pity  that  they  are  not 
written  in  the  English  language."  Sumner 
represented  that  group  of  would-be  super- 
intellectuals  to  whom  writing  in  dialect  is 
the  committing  of  a  sin  against  the  most 
sacred  literary  conventionalities.  Lowell's  use 
of  the  Yankee  dialect  in  the  Biglow  Papers 
enhanced  their  literary  value  because  it  gave 
them  a  closer  contact  with  life.  They  are 
rooted  in  the  very  soil  of  New  England.  They 
give  expression  to  the  philosophy  of  an  un 
common  common  man.  Hosea  Biglow  is  not 
a  type  but  an  individual.  He  has  all  of  Lowell's 
own  brilliancy  and  penetration.  This  was  not 
true  of  every  Yankee  farmer,  but  it  was  true 
of  some.  The  fact  that  Lowell  had  the  dra 
matic  power  to  express  himself  through  such 
a  rugged  personality  is  not  the  least  of  the 
evidences  of  his  title  to  a  literary  preeminence. 
This  Harvard  professor  and  exemplar  of  a  rich 
cosmopolitan  culture  never  lost  his  contact 
with  the  common  things  of  life. 

Lowell,  like  most  of  the  towering  figures  of 
literature,  again  and  again  stressed  certain 


176       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

dominant  ideas.  These  are  at  the  center  of 
his  teaching.  In  many  instances  these  out 
standing  truths  are  expressed  time  after  time 
in  the  two  series  of  dialect  poems.  The  pres 
ence  of  wit  does  not  mean  the  absence  of 
wisdom.  In  one  of  his  essays  he  speaks  of 
those  individuals  who  "have  been  sent  into 
the  world  unfurnished  with  the  modulating  and 
restraining  balance  wheel  which  we  call  a  sense 
of  humor." 

To  this  group  all  work  of  humor  is  vanity 
and  vexation  of  spirit.  Others,  however,  in 
the  Biglow  Papers  will  come  into  contact  with 
some  of  the  ripest,  richest,  and  most  virile 
thoughts  in  American  literature.  In  these 
poems  we  find  more  of  Lowell  than  in  any 
other  work  that  came  from  his  pen. 


XI 

LESSENING  THE  DENOMINATOR 

IT  is  in  Sartor  Resartus  that  we  read  the 
somewhat  enigmatic  sentence:  "The  Fraction 
of  Life  can  be  increased  in  value  not  so  much 
by  increasing  your  Numerator  as  by  lessening 
your  Denominator."  Few  men  have  made  a 
more  consistent  effort  to  do  this  than  Henry 
David  Thoreau.  Walden  is  the  story  of  a 
sincere  effort  to  increase  the  value  of  life  by 
lessening  the  denominator.  The  book  is  drawn 
from  a  journal  which  the  eccentric  naturalist 
kept  during  the  two  years  in  which  he  lived 
in  the  shanty  on  the  banks  of  Walden  Pond. 
The  book  is  interesting  not  so  much  because 
it  tells  of  the  author's  ability  to  support  him 
self  upon  the  princely  sum  of  seventeen  cents 
a  week,  but  rather  on  account  of  its  giving 
expression  to  a  luminous  and  distinctively 
individualistic  philosophy  of  life. 

The  life  of  Thoreau  could  not  be  taken  as 
a  model.  It  was  egoistic  rather  than  social. 
After  his  death  his  friend  and  mentor,  Emer 
son,  wrote  of  him:  "He  was  bred  to  no  pro- 
177 


178       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

fession;  he  never  married;  he  never  voted; 
he  refused  to  pay  a  tax  to  the  State;  he  ate  no 
flesh,  he  drank  no  wine;  he  never  knew  the  use 
of  tobacco;  and,  though  a  naturalist,  he  used 
neither  trap  nor  gun."  Not  all  of  these  devi 
ations  from  the  typical  life  of  his  generation 
can  be  looked  upon  as  virtues.  For  most  of 
us  Thoreau's  two  years  of  existence  in  the 
woods  would  not  be  ideal.  After  Whittier  read 
the  book  he  pronounced  it  "capital  reading," 
but  continued,  "The  practical  moral  of  it  seems 
to  be  that  if  a  man  is  willing  to  sink  himself 
into  a  woodchuck  he  can  live  as  cheaply  as 
that  quadruped;  but,  after  all,  for  me,  I  prefer 
walking  on  two  legs."  Such  a  reaction  is  easy 
to  understand,  but  it  is,  nevertheless,  decidedly 
unjust.  The  central  thought  of  the  volume  is 
found  in  the  words:  "A  man  is  rich  in  pro 
portion  to  the  number  of  things  which  he  can 
afford  to  let  alone."  Brander  Matthews  says 
Walden  is  a  "most  wholesome  warning  to  all 
those  who  are  willing  to  let  life  itself  be  smoth 
ered  out  of  them  by  luxuries  they  have  allowed 
to  become  necessaries." 

In  one  of  the  cleverest,  but  unfairest  essays 
which  came  from  his  pen,  Lowell  without 
mercy  excoriates  Thoreau  and  his  philosophy 
of  life.  But  in  spite  of  himself,  Lowell  gets  to 
the  heart  of  the  significance  of  the  Walden 


LESSENING  THE  DENOMINATOR    179 

experiment  and  admits  that  its  "aim  was  a 
noble  and  useful  one  in  the  direction  of  plain 
living  and  high  thinking."  It  was  a  protest 
against  the  tendency  of  the  American  to  be 
come  the  slave  of  his  possessions.  The  story 
is  told  that  a  friend  attempted  to  present 
Thoreau  with  a  mat  to  be  placed  in  front  of 
the  door  of  the  Walden  hut,  but  he  unhesi 
tatingly  refused  it.  He  said  that  by  wiping 
his  feet  on  the  grass  he  could  save  himself 
the  trouble  of  taking  care  of  another  article. 
Henry  Thoreau  may  have  been  an  extremist. 
However,  it  is  possible  that  it  would  be  better 
for  an  individual  to  follow  his  example  rather 
than  to  make  himself  the  slave  of  a  clutter 
of  a  conglomerate  of  objects  neither  beautiful 
nor  useful.  It  was  not  many  years  ago  that 
the  largest  and  best-located  room  in  the 
American  home  was  filled  with  haircloth  furni 
ture,  crayon  portraits  in  hideous  frames,  and 
other  aesthetic  monstrosities,  and  then  merci 
fully  closed  for  about  three  hundred  and  sixty- 
four  days  of  the  year;  but  visited  frequently  by 
the  industrious  housewife,  who  must  keep  her 
treasures  free  from  the  defiling  presence  of 
dust.  Even  to-day  thousands  of  American 
women  are  the  servants  of  their  dwelling 
places.  More  than  one  life  has  been  shortened 
by  utterly  useless  labor.  Walden  is  a  sermon 


180       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

against  the  sin  of  Marthaism.  A  person 
"troubled  about  many  things"  has  no  time  to 
master  the  art  of  living. 

Thoreau  has  been  criticized  because  instead 
of  making  money  by  manufacturing  lead  pen 
cils,  he  took  time  to  enjoy  life  in  his  own 
peculiar  way.  He  could  say  like  Walt  Whitman, 

"I  loaf  and  invite  my  soul." 

It  must  be  admitted  that  not  every  loafer 
invites  his  soul  to  be  a  partner  in  his  enter 
prises.  The  typical  American,  however,  is 
likely  to  be  too  busy  to  realize  that  he  is 
a  being  fundamentally  spiritual.  "Young 
people,"  said  a  college  professor  to  one  of  his 
classes,  "you  look  as  though  you  spent  twice 
as  much  time  studying  as  you  should."  The 
jaded-looking  group  perceptibly  brightened,  but 
he  continued  as  follows,  "But  you  recite  as 
though  you  did  not  spend  half  enough  time 
at  your  books."  It  is  easy  indeed  to  be  tre 
mendously  busy  doing  nothing.  In  Chaucer's 
Prolog  there  is  a  typical  and  delightful  couplet 
in  which  the  poet  says  of  one  of  his  characters, 

"Nowher  so  busy  as  a  man  as  he  ther  nas, 
And  yet  he  seemed  bisier  than  he  was." 

A  life  can  be  buried  beneath  futile  details, 
Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan  gives  some  good 


LESSENING  THE  DENOMINATOR    181 

advice  when  he  says,  "Now  and  then  be  idle; 
sit  and  think."  No  more  precious  gift  is 
intrusted  to  our  stewardship  than  that  of  time. 
A  man's  very  soul  may  be  entombed  beneath  a 
mountain  of  trivialities.  Efficiency  depends  not 
only  upon  knowing  what  to  do,  but  also  upon 
a  knowledge  of  what  to  leave  undone.  He 
who  allows  trifles  to  dominate  his  life  narrows 
his  vision  and  impedes  his  usefulness.  Ex 
treme  busyness  is  America's  besetting  sin. 
The  securing  of  leisure  is  not  only  a  privilege 
but  a  duty.  Thoreau  at  least  mastered  those 
elements  of  truth  which  the  world  contained 
for  his  especial  acquisition.  The  writing  of  at 
least  one  volume  which  has  an  assured  place 
among  the  classics  of  American  literature 
would  alone  be  a  fairly  creditable  showing  for 
a  life  of  little  more  than  forty  years.  How 
many  of  Thoreau's  merciless  critics  have  that 
much  to  their  credit? 

Diogenes  once  said,  "Lord,  I  thank  thee 
that  there  are  so  many  things  which  Diogenes 
can  do  without."  It  is,  indeed,  easy  for  a 
man  to  allow  himself  to  be  made  the  slave  of 
things.  The  "high  cost  of  living"  presents  a 
problem  that  is  decidedly  real,  but  by  its  side 
is  the  equally  vital  question  of  the  cost  of 
"high  living."  In  the  American  life  of  to-day 
it  would  be  hard  to  draw  the  line  between 


182       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

that  which  is  spent  on  pleasure  or  luxury  and 
that  spent  on  display.  Sometimes  we  buy  to 
please  Mrs.  Grundy.  Our  richer  neighbor  has 
something,  and  therefore  we  must  have  it, 
whether  we  can  afford  it  or  not.  This  fearful 
and  merciless  competition  in  the  possession  of 
things  has  for  decades  been  one  of  the  baneful 
influences  of  modern  life.  Thoreau  says:  "The 
cost  of  a  thing  is  the  amount  of  what  I  will 
call  life,  which  is  required  to  be  exchanged 
for  it,  immediately  or  in  the  long  run."  Many 
times  the  price  of  display  or  luxury  has  meant 
the  sacrificing  of  the  higher  values  of  life.  For 
our  own  generation  there  is  a  mournful  truth 
in  Wordsworth's  lines: 

"The  world  is  too  much  with  us;  late  and  soon, 
Getting  and  spending,  we  lay  waste  our  powers." 

Life  is  more  than  a  matter  of  getting  and 
spending.  Of  course  Thoreau's  teaching  is  no 
solution  for  the  burning  and  social  economic 
issues  which  with  every  month  seem  to  be 
looming  larger  and  larger.  But  the  philosophy 
of  Walden  contains  truths  which  just  now  are 
preeminently  vital.  During  the  war  we  learned 
that  there  were  many  supposed  necessities 
with  which  we  could  do  without  and  suffer 
no  serious  inconvenience.  It  was  hoped  that 
our  national  baptism  of  blood  would  cure  us 


LESSENING  THE  DENOMINATOR    183 

of  our  debauch  of  luxury.  But  still  there  are 
those  to  whom  the  recent  years  have  brought 
more  money  than  they  ever  dreamed  of  pos 
sessing.  And  wealth  without  a  knowledge  of 
how  to  use  it  is  a  curse.  Every  decade  seems 
to  wallow  deeper  and  deeper  in  the  mire  of 
luxury.  The  severe  and  simple  life  of  the 
fathers  frequently  is  replaced  by  a  soft  and 
luxurious  life  on  the  part  of  the  later  genera 
tion.  In  the  best  sense  of  the  word  wealth 
is  a  national  blessing,  but  there  are  circum 
stances  where  the  proper  name  for  it  is  what 
Ruskin  terms  "illth."  No  people  has  ever 
been  able  to  endure  an  excess  of  luxury  for  any 
long  period.  Giving  preeminence  to  "things" 
means  the  degradation  of  manhood  and  -woman 
hood.  Thoreau  by  reducing  the  material  part 
of  life  to  its  simplest  elements  taught  us  a 
lesson  which  it  would  not  be  wise  for  us  to 
forget. 

"I  have  traveled  much,"  said  Thoreau,  "in 
Concord."  He  himself  lived  not  extensively 
but  intensively.  Men  have  journeyed  around 
the  world  and  have  seen  much  less  than  that 
which  this  eccentric  New  Englander  saw  by 
the  banks  of  Walden  pond.  Sometimes  it 
would  be  much  wiser  for  us  to  reread  an  old 
book  than  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  a  new 
one.  Superficial  study  means  shallow,  loose- 


184       JOHN  RUSKIN,  PREACHER 

thinking  manhood  and  womanhood.  Hum- 
boldt  unjustly  spoke  of  an  eminent  American 
writer  as  having  traveled  the  farthest  and  seen 
the  least  of  any  man  in  the  world.  The  num 
ber  of  miles  which  a  man  covers  means  nothing. 
What  we  bring  back  from  a  journey  depends 
upon  what  we  take  with  us.  To  him  that 
hath  shall  be  given.  One  truth  studied  from 
all  sides  has  in  it  more  that  is  really  educative 
than  a  casual  acquaintance  with  everything 
beneath  the  sun.  .  No  sane  man  would  to-day 
repeat  with  reference  to  himself  Bacon's  never- 
to-be-forgotten  phrase:  "I  take  all  knowledge 
to  be  my  province."  Range  and  breadth  of 
thought  are  poor  substitutes  for  thoroughness 
and  depth.  Agassiz  would  have  a  student 
spend  day  after  day  upon  the  study  of  a 
single  fish.  It  is  easy  for  a  hurried,  nervous 
traveler  to  bring  home  nothing  but  a  confused 
mass  of  mental  chaos.  A  renowned  globe 
trotter  when  interrogated  in  regard  to  Da 
Vinci's  Mona  Lisa  said  that  if  the  painting 
were  in  the  Louvre  he  must  have  seen  it  be 
cause  he  spent  over  three  hours  in  that  gal 
lery.  There  are  those  who  seem  to  have  read 
so  much  that  they  have  forgotten  everything. 
Abraham  Lincoln's  lack  of  access  to  many 
books  was  not  an  unmixed  misfortune.  What 
he  learned  he  learned.  A  man  who  knows  one 


LESSENING  THE  DENOMINATOR    185 

village  as  Thoreau  knew  Concord  and  its 
environs  is  better  educated  than  the  pro 
fessional  wanderer  upon  the  face  of  the  earth. 
Most  of  us  are  satisfied  to  live  upon  the  sur 
face.  Life  becomes  insipid  because  even  though 
having  eyes  we  see  not. 

Another  great  book  is  Gilbert  White's  The 
Parish  of  Selbourne,  the  result  of  an  English 
clergyman's  study  of  the  natural  history  of  a 
village  and  countryside.  John  Burroughs  has 
found  material  for  more  than  one  idyll  in  and 
around  an  old  hay  barn.  Jane  Austin  studied 
the  commonplace  lives  of  insignificant  people 
and  developed  an  unsurpassable  power  of 
analyzing  the  human  mind  and  heart.  The 
villager  knows  human  nature  better  than  the 
dweller  in  the  city.  His  opportunities  for  an 
intensive  study  of  his  neighbors  have  been 
exceptionally  good,  and  on  account  of  the  lack 
of  other  distractions  he  does  not  neglect  to 
avail  himself  of  his  advantages  along  these 
lines.  G.  Stanley  Hall  once  made  the  thought- 
provoking  statement  that  all  psychology  has 
its  origin  in  gossip.  Thoreau  found  nature  and 
life  near  at  hand  of  such  thrilling  interest  that 
he  did  not  have  to  rush  hither  and  yon  in 
search  of  new  excitement  in  order  to  prevent 
his  life  from  becoming  flat  and  inane. 

It  must  not  be  thought,  though,  that  Thoreau 


186       JOHN  RTJSKIN,  PREACHER 

was  provincial-minded.  He  had  spent  four 
years  at  Harvard,  although  he  had  not  re 
ceived  his  diploma  on  account  of  his  refusing 
to  pay  the  fee  demanded  for  the  sheepskin, 
his  reason  being  that  in  his  opinion  it  was  not 
worth  the  price.  His  professors  did  not  know 
what  to  make  of  the  independent  youth  from 
Concord.  Yet  his  days  at  Cambridge  were 
not  wasted.  The  quotations  which  are  rather 
generously  scattered  through  his  writings  show 
a  wide  and  intelligent  reading.  His  back 
ground  was  large  enough  to  give  a  perspective 
for  the  study  of  the  life  near  at  hand.  He 
was  not  like  Goethe,  who  sat  dreaming  while 
the  guns  of  earth-shaking  battles  were  boom 
ing  around  him.  His  patriotism,  like  every 
thing  else  about  him,  was  highly  distinctive. 
But  he  at  least  kept  his  finger  upon  the  great 
throbbing  pulse  of  his  time.  Concord,  however, 
was  the  center  of  the  world  in  which  Thoreau 
lived.  Because  he  knew  the  life  near  at  hand, 
all  that  he  said  and  wrote  is  singularly  vital. 
His  feet  were  planted  upon  solid  earth. 

Life  for  all  of  us  is  made  up  of  compromises. 
No  man,  however  sincere  and  noble  his  motives, 
can  do  exactly  as  he  pleases.  Sometimes  we 
must  take  half  of  the  loaf  or  go  breadless. 
But  this  was  not  the  philosophy  of  Thoreau. 
He  was  no  compromiser.  *  No  man  conceded 


LESSENING  THE  DENOMINATOR    187 

less  to  society;  yet  no  man  was  more  loyal  to 
his  obligations  to  his  fellowmen.  He  did  his 
work  as  a  surveyor  with  such  faithfulness  that 
those  who  followed  him  found  his  lines  correct 
to  the  smallest  detail.  His  philosophy  of  life 
was  indeed  one  of  "plain  living  and  high  think 
ing."  He  uttered  truths  to  which  his  fellow 
countrymen  still  need  to  listen.  There  is  no 
better  way  of  raising  the  value  of  the  fraction 
of  a  life  than  by  decreasing  the  denominator. 


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